Eric Cantor & Spencer Baucus Give It To Ron Paul-- Without Lube

It was a little complicated following the intricacies of the last minute-- PLANNED last minute-- voting in the House last week. No one is ever going to persuade me that Pelosi and Hoyer and the rest of the Democratic leadership didn't confront the fact that they couldn't find enough votes to support Obama's Afghanistan war supplemental without domestic funding (since Democrats would desert) or with domestic funding (since Republicans would desert) so that they took the trickery route, confusing everyone into voting for a Rule that, in effect, authorized the war spending. Really disgusting!

But there was another vote I couldn't understand, Wednesday's GOP Motion to Recommit the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (HR 4173). What tipped me off that something was amiss was that aside from the usual cast of reactionary Blue Dogs crossing the aisle and voting with the Republicans, a couple of reform-minded Democrats who are very much in favor of Wall Street reform-- Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Paul Hodes (D-NH)-- each of whom turned around and voted for the bill's passage a few minutes later, voted to recommit. I think I understand it now. It was another move by the transpartisan ruling elite getting it two most loyal handmaidens, in this case, Eric Cantor (R-VA), who's taken $4,148,935 from the Finance Sector, and Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who's taken $4,338,674-- to make sure the weaker Audit the Fed language in the Senate bill would win out over the much stronger House language that Ron Paul was behind.

Remember, there were nearly 150 Democratic co-sponsors and just about every single Republican-- even opponents like Cantor and Bachus-- paying it lip service. So when it was announced that HR 4173 would be coming for a vote, Cantor and Bachus called Boehner at his tanning salon and told an aide they wanted to pull a fast one on Ron Paul and all the Paulistas who were ruining Cantor's latest parlor game: You Cut. The Paulistas have been flooding the voting with audit the Fed demands, driving Cantor bonkers. So, without informing Ron Paul-- let alone the 150 Democrats who co-sponsored it-- Cantor and Bachus introduced the Motion to Recommit with an instruction to put the House language back in the Wall Street Reform. And then they proceeded to vote on it without a debate or even an announcement of what it was.

Hodes and Grayson figured it out but Hoyer was definitely working and-in-glove with Cantor, Boehner and Bachus to get rid of the language that would have allowed audits going forward, not just audits looking backward (which is what the Senate passed). But no one else did. It explains why every single Republican voted for the motion, as they always do, but that the Democratic co-sponsors, for the most part didn't. Had Cantor allowed Ron Paul to introduce it or had Bachus mentioned what was in the motion, it would have been easy to find another 14 Democrats to vote YES. But that isn't what anyone wanted. So instead we get this bizarre vote with 21 conservative, mostly Blue Dog, Democrats voting, as they always do, with the GOP-- plus the two reformers, Grayson and Hodes. It failed 198-229, despite virtually the whole country-- and most Members of Congress-- wanting it to pass.