Bob Corker had done what few Senate Republicans have recently accomplished: Work alongside Democrats to produce an important piece of policy -- the financial-reform bill -- without turning around to call it a failure immediately after the ink was dry.
Then, on MSNBC Tuesday morning, Corker told viewers that "there's nothing in this bill that's tough on Wall Street." While the bill coming before the Senate is far from perfect, it's certainly angered the Wall Street banks. In fact, the part he co-wrote -- the part that liquidates a failing firm instead of bailing it out -- is one of the toughest parts.
We should start at the beginning: Bob Corker is a first-term senator from Tennessee (he beat Harold Ford in 2006 after a campaign tinged with racial politics), the kind of legislator normally seen and not heard. Yet Corker's been banging about the Senate chamber, pissing off nearly everyone -- and particularly Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell -- in what appears to be an attempt to claim the maverick throne John McCain recently abandoned.
Corker is one of the only members of the GOP caucus to betray any sense that maybe obstruction isn't the best route to success. He managed to set aside doctrinaire ideology -- and his party's instructions -- to work with Sen. Mark Warner on one of the strongest parts of the new financial-reform bill. Even better, he has gone on the record defending it. It's almost as if he takes his job seriously. But, as one observer tells me, "Cork's a bit of a flirt." We'll know exactly how important governing is to the Senate's newest maverick when he actually votes.
Last year, Corker began working with Warner, the Virginia Democrat and his fellow member of the Banking Committee, on the "too big to fail" problem at the heart of the financial crisis. They devised new prudential standards for large financial firms and created a new mechanism for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to liquidate failing banks instead of bailing them out. Rather than allowing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up weak institutions, the legislation would shut them down and charge banks for the costs of cleaning up the mess.
But the ranking Republican on the committee, Richard Shelby, broke off negotiations with the committee's chair, Chris Dodd, saying that while they were agreed on 80 percent of the bill, Republicans could go no further. Corker jumped into the fray, offering to continue negotiations with Dodd over the objections of his committee and party leaders. Weeks of talks ensued, a few compromises were written into the bill, but Dodd brought the bill to the committee without waiting for Corker's full support. Republicans declined to debate further, and the bill went to the Senate floor by a partisan vote.
Republicans, torn between their desire to prevent the Obama administration from securing yet another legislative victory and the politically disastrous idea of allying themselves with the banks, adopted the advice of media guru Frank Luntz and began calling the effort a pro-Wall Street bill that makes the recent bank bailouts permanent.
It does nothing of the sort, and even Corker seems a bit offended by the notion, since he co-wrote the part of the bill that ends bailouts. (Spokespeople in both Warner's and Dodd's offices confirm for me that the Warner-Corker language remains in the final bill; Corker's office declined to comment for this story.) Corker is a bit smarter on the politics than his fellow Republicans -- opposing, rather than influencing, a financial-reform bill is, he says, a "major strategic error."
McConnell has taken to calling the bill "an endless taxpayer bailout of Wall Street banks." And Corker has taken to the Senate floor to refute him. "This fund that's been set up is anything but a bailout," he said on Monday. "The rhetoric on my side of the aisle saying that this orderly liquidation title basically keeps 'too big to fail' in place ... that's not true."
Corker took up another critique of the bill. "Here's another argument: This allows [large] firms competitive funding advantage over smaller institutions, like community banks," Corker said Monday on the Senate floor. "If you're saying that these large firms ... that somehow they're protected or have a competitive advantage -- I find that to be kind of ludicrous, and I hope that argument is not used."
Then, Tuesday morning, he was on MSNBC.
"It's our community bankers across the country that we need to be concerned about with this regulation," he said. "When this bill passes, the only thing that's going to happen is the large firms that exist are going to get larger."
Whiplash, I know. Corker must be under enormous pressure from party leadership to toe the line; his attempts to work on the bill met with harsh criticism from his friends on the right. That's not even to mention pressure from the financial industry -- his image suffered recently when a campaign aide offered lobbyists meetings with the senator in exchange for donations (the sort of direct quid pro quo frowned upon in Washington, which appreciates a legislator who pays lip service to propriety) and when reporters caught the senator trying to remove a provision from the bill that would regulate the payday-lending industry, which has given him some $31,000 since 2001.
So what will Corker do? Republicans are lining up to oppose the bill before it is even debated; Corker signed on to a letter promising to engage in a procedural roadblock. Democrats are following a strategy that I outlined several months ago: Bring a relatively strong bill to the floor, strengthen it with amendments, and dare the GOP to oppose it. If Republicans filibuster a bill that is hard on the banks, it will be a political victory for the Democrats; if Republicans decide to engage in meaningful reform, it will be a bipartisan victory that reflects well on the majority party.
Corker knows this isn't a bad bill; he knows there is little reason for him to block it, much less vote against it. He also knows his political future in Tennessee and in the Senate requires him to be a Republican partisan, however much the broader electorate would like to see the banks reined in. It's not a choice I envy.
Once again, we're about to see Republicans use a procedural gambit to block debate on a national priority. When progressives complain about the filibuster and call for reform of Senate rules, critics respond that they shouldn't make the upper chamber into another House of Representatives -- it's supposed to be a place of deliberation, not partisan bickering.
That depends on senators like Corker not acting like junior representatives, jumping at the beck and call of their party leaders. The best argument against ending the filibuster is not using it capriciously. Corker has said in the past that he's willing to be the only Republican vote on financial reform. Bob, here's your chance.
