RUSH: Christopher Dodd yesterday on the floor of the US Senate, he’s almost lost his mind. He claims that people are mischaracterizing his baby, the financial regulatory reform bill. We have two sound bites. Here’s the first one.
DODD: I’ve been so dismayed over these last 24 hours to hear members of this body repeat the utter falsehoods concocted by special interests whose jobs and pensions are plenty secure, thank you very much, that this bill would lead to more bailouts. Mr. President, it’s straight from the Wall Street special interest talking points. That’s what they’re determined to do, defeat this bill by suggesting somehow that there’s a bailout provision in this bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bill, as drafted, ends bailouts.
RUSH: Yeah? Well, how does it do that? It creates a $50 billion slush fund and allows the Treasury secretary and the president to arbitrarily take over a company or shut it down, not bail it out, fire the board of directors, or bring it under federal control. Nobody is lying about what’s in your little baby bill. We’re not going to bail ’em out. We’re gonna put ’em out of business. If Obama doesn’t like who they’re donating money to, if Obama doesn’t like the product we’re gonna put ’em out of business, we’re gonna force ’em out of business, senator. Of course we’re not going to bail ’em out. Now, there’s some consumer protection provisions in this bill that are pretty good, you know, credit card companies and so forth. That’s what he ought to be focusing on if he really wants to sell this thing.
But they’ve lost control of it because everybody now knows what the real purpose of the bill is. The consumer protections are just a little sop in there to get you to support all the rest of this thing because you think there’s something in it for you. What they really want is that ever increasing slush fund to be able to take over, operate, fire, get rid of, downsize, whatever they want to do to any company they think is in danger of causing a problem. Robert B. Reich goes along with it, too. Oh, yeah, he does, he doesn’t think a bank ought to be bigger than a hundred billion dollars. Do I have that sound bite here somewhere? Let me look for it while we play the second Christopher Dodd sound bite from the Senate floor yesterday.
DODD: Cracking down on the biggest players is critical to ending bailouts. And if a Wall Street firm does become too large or too complex and poses a grave threat to our financial stability, the Federal Reserve has the power to restrict its risky activities, restrict its growth, and, Mr. President, even to break up those institutions.
RUSH: That’s right. There will not be any more bailouts, the government will just have the power to put companies out of business, seize their assets, break them up, fire employees. And he’s upset because they’re saying it’s a bailout bill? This is so convoluted. This piece of legislation is as filled with fraud and deception as was the health care bill. The real purpose of this is nothing to do with making sure we don’t have another economic collapse, it’s nothing to do with ensuring that there aren’t business cycles because nobody can do that. There’s no way you can ever insure against a business cycle, pure and simple. What this bill is all about is expanding federal control over financial institutions. The Democrats are trying to take advantage of the fact that they think you hate financial institutions, that you hate Wall Street, and that you’ll go along with Obama occasionally seizing control of some of these places and running them, just like the car companies.
They’re banking on the fact that you hate banks and Wall Street firms and that they can ratchet up your hate to even higher levels so that you will support them because they think you’ll look at them as the white knights, as the angels, ‘Yeah, we’re not gonna pay these people any bonuses anymore, we’re going to make sure they loan to people and don’t make people pay it back. Yeah, we’re going to make ’em treat people fair for once, even if we have to run it ourselves, yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do.’ That’s how they’re hoping to sell you, along with consumer protection aspects of the bill. Here is former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reichhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-h-h-h-h-h-cha, who was on CNN, Campbell Brown last night. She said, ‘The banks are paying this, but obviously they’re gonna pass that on to its consumers, so ultimately we’re all paying –‘ (laughing) — how many people watch this show, 25,000 people one week watched this show. Here’s the question. The banks are paying this $50 billion fund. By the way, that’s true, this bill requires the banks to set up the slush fund where the government can come in and take ’em over. So Campbell Brown says, ‘The banks are paying this, but obviously they’re going to pass that on to its customers, so ultimately we’re all paying for the slush fund, right?’
REICH: We all pay every time a bank gets into trouble, Campbell. No bank should be too big to fail. In fact, I would personally rather, in the bill, there be a limit on the size of all banks. No bank should be larger than a hundred billion dollars in assets.
BROWN: So why can’t we get that in the bill?
REICH: Why can’t they get that in the bill? I imagine because Wall Street is very powerful, both with Democrats and Republicans.
RUSH: Campbell, so you’ve got a diminutive little lecturer on who says out of the top of his head that no bank ought to be bigger than a hundred billion dollars, and rather than say why, you say, ‘Why, why can’t we do that, why? Why can’t we do that? Why do we do that?’ Well, labor secretary Reichhhh, ‘Because Wall Street’s very powerful, too many –‘ (interruptions) You know, I’m about ready to go on. I’m going to accept some of these invitations, Snerdley, to go on these shows and get a question, say, ‘Before I answer the question, I just want to say that I think no television journalist in primetime ought to make more than $100,000 a year, especially on a network that’s not making any money and doesn’t have any viewers.’