I was briefly excited yesterday when it looked like Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell couldn't get enough support to filibuster Senate Democrats' financial-reform legislation, but today he's succeeded in corralling his caucus to sign a letter of opposition. (I still doubt that all 41 GOPers will be there for a cloture vote, however.) The letter's premise is that Democrats haven't taken a bipartisan approach to legislating.
Which is ridiculous. As in the health-care bill, there were months and months of negotiations with key Republicans before the bill left the committee; Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd insisted that Republican staffers join his staff's meetings with Treasury officials to draft the bill. Key parts of the legislation that reflect this bipartisan process, including the resolution authorities, a Too Big To Fail solution, and the location of consumer-protection authorities, remain in the bill despite the fact that Republicans didn't vote for it. The same thing happened in the health-care bill: Democrats included hundreds of Republican amendments; the Republicans chose not to support the bill and then attacked Democrats as partisan for using standard legislative procedure to pass the reforms.
This strategy is very dangerous for Republicans and for bipartisanship in the future. Democrats have reached out to Republicans, though certainly not as much as the Republicans might like, and obviously there are serious philosophical differences between the two parties. The GOP might not prefer much of the Democrats' approach. They can choose to oppose it, as they will. But lying and saying the bill doesn't reflect the influence of both parties -- as the letter does, or Sen. Judd Gregg did yesterday -- is just asking the Democrats to stop engaging with the GOP at all.
-- Tim Fernholz
