A Different Kind Of Bipartisanship

Right kind of bipartisanship-- auditing the Fed with Ron Paul and Alan Grayson

David Broder is no longer among the quick but the kind of Beltway Establishment bipartisanship he always championed and extolled-- the kind that launched the Iraq War, the TARP bankster bailout, the sequester and, last week, the latest Austerity-orineted Continuing Resolution is alive and well... and working overtime to dismantle the New Deal. Boehner and Obama very much want to shake Social Security to its foundations by taking away earned benefits from seniors-- they call it the Chained CPI, severe pain for seniors and a hidden tax Boehner/McConnell-school Republicans are more than happy to support.

But there's another kind of bipartisanship coming into vogue in DC, one that could threaten the dominance of the ruling Establishment elites. Boehner was so freaked out when he saw libertarians like Justin Amash (R-MI) and Walter Jones (R-NC) working across the aisle that he kicked both of them off their most important committees. Boehner puppets Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling booted, respectively, Amash off the Budget Committee and Jones off the Financial Services Committee. Earlier today we visited with Congressman Jones, the first Republican ever invited to a Blue America live chat, to discuss bill a war powers resolution he introduced and a new law he and progressive Democrat Rosa DeLauro wrote to speed up the end to the tragic and pointless occupation of Afghanistan. As I mentioned in the intro, Alan Grayson introduced me to Jones and this is what Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva had to say, from Tucson, when I told him Jones would be a Blue America guest today: "We all remember the long years of the Bush/Cheney machine and how hard it was to find a Republican to speak the truth. My colleague Walter Jones became an almost lone voice of reason in his party and he's stayed true to his word every day since. I'm glad to have him on our side. When it comes to real checks and balances, Congress' oversight duties, drone attacks and warmaking, he's been as right as anyone, and I'm happy to see him get the recognition he deserves for his courage."

And it's not just war and Afghanistan and Iraq and drones, pot, auditing the Fed, and civil liberties on which progressives and libertarians have more in common with each other than they do with their respective DC party Establishment. A few weeks ago I held my nose and managed to bring myself to admit that deranged GOP sex predator David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), one of the Senate's most detestable and vile members, is working diligently with Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to break up the big banks! And it's not just the contemptible Vitter doing God's work here. Jason Sattler counts 5 Republicans working with Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren on this.

There is definitely a conservative case against “too big to fail.” Bernanke was a registered Republican before he took over his nonpartisan position at the Fed. But there are definitely Republicans who believe something needs to be done to constrain the big banks that are bigger now than they were before the crisis.

Here are 5 other members of the Grand Old Party who want to break up the big banks.

Only Vitter's in Congress but he points to influential Republicans Jon Huntsman, Sheila Bair, AEI columnist James Pethokoukis and George Will.

With his chronically gravelly voice and relentlessly liberal agenda, Sherrod Brown seems to have stepped out of Les Miserables, hoarse from singing revolutionary anthems at the barricades. Today, Ohio’s senior senator has a project worthy of Victor Hugo-- and of conservatives’ support. He wants to break up the biggest banks.

He would advocate this even if he thought such banks would never have a crisis sufficient to threaten the financial system. He believes they are unhealthy for the financial system even when they are healthy. This is because there is a silent subsidy-- an unfair competitive advantage relative to community banks-- inherent in being deemed by the government, implicitly but clearly, too big to fail.

The Senate has unanimously passed a bill offered by Brown and Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, directing the Government Accountability Office to study whether banks with more than $500 billion in assets acquire an “economic benefit” because of their dangerous scale. Is their debt priced favorably because, being TBTF, they are considered especially creditworthy? Brown believes the 20 largest banks pay less when borrowing-- 50 to 80 basis points less-- than community banks must pay.

...Brown is fond of the maxim that “banking should be boring.” He suspects that within the organizational sprawl of the biggest banks, there is too much excitement. Clever people with the high spirits and adrenaline addictions of fighter pilots continue to develop exotic financial instruments and transactions unknown even in other parts of the sprawl. He is undecided about whether the proper metric for identifying a bank as “too big” should be if its assets are a certain percentage of GDP-- he suggests 2 percent to 4 percent-- or simply the size of its assets (Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has suggested $100 billion).

By breaking up the biggest banks, conservatives will not be putting asunder what the free market has joined together. Government nurtured these behemoths by weaving an improvident safety net and by practicing crony capitalism. Dismantling them would be a blow against government that has become too big not to fail. Aux barricades!

Is party identity Inside the Beltway becoming even more worthless? The House Democratic Caucus is almost entirely under the thumb of the Wall Street-financed New Dems. Stinking of the kind of grotesque corruption usually associated with the worst Republican corporate shills, we now have Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Joe Crowley (D-NY) and Steve Israel (D-NY) running the show in the Democratic caucus. I would trust Republican Walter Jones on any issues related to money and finances before any of these crooks. How about if we al agree to not vote for any congressmember who voted for the Sequester? The House would be cleansed of 174 Republicans and Democrats in one shot. What's not to like!?!?! Imagine Washington without Boehner (OH), Cantor (VA), McCarthy (CA), Ryan (WI), McKeon (CA), Issa (CA), Foxx (NC), Hensarling (TX), Royce (CA), Upton (MI), McHenry (NC), Pompeo (Koch Industries), Camp (MI), all 3 Rogerses (AL KY and MI), Sessions (TX), Mica (FL), Sensenbrenner (WI)... and we "trade" away Hoyer (MD), Israel (NY), Wasserman Schultz (FL), Lipinski (IL), Schrader (OR), Barrow GA), Costa (CA), Matheson (UT), Schiff (CA), Kind (WI), Lynch (MA), Cooper (TN), Larsen (WA) and most of the rest of the Blue Dogs and New Dems. Hate to see Pelosi and Clyburn go down this way but they've slipped up badly in their dotage and each represents a district likely to send a far more dedicated progressive to Congress anyway.