Some Traitors in the Senate, as Obama Tries To Kill Glass-Steagall

May 12, 2010 (LPAC) — The discredited Sen. Christopher Dodd, retiring and rejected by Connecticut voters, is continuing to try to control the "financial regulation" debate in the Senate, and as the Obama White House's agent to stop the Senate from passing the Glass-Steagall amendment the American public's majority wants.

On May 11 Dodd managed debate and voting on only four of the 100 amendments to the bill, and is continuing to feed the media accounts of the "important" amendments, which do not include Glass-Steagall. Yesterday's debate was dominated by the Sanders amendment to compel a GAO audit of the actions of the Federal Reserve in the great bank bailout since 2007. Sanders' is a somewhat weakened version of the Ron Paul amendment which overwhelmingly passed the House in January, which would have legislated continuing, annual GAO audits of the Fed and its money-printing binges. The weakening was insisted on by Obama and Bernanke, as Dodd made clear in the debate on Tuesday. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) then independently introduced the original Sanders amendment — identical to the Ron Paul amendment in the House — and what were really the "two Sanders amendments" were debated together.

Sanders' weakened amendment, which the Fed is still fighting, passed 96-0 after the debate. Vitter's amendment failed, 37-62, with Democrats under White House pressure to fall in line against it; but a significant Democratic "resistance vote" for Vitter included Sens. Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden (OR), Blanche Lincoln (ARK), Russ Feingold (WI), Byron Dorgan (ND), and James Webb (VA). Cantwell, along with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), is sponsoring the Glass-Steagall restoration amendment, which has a national groundswell of support, but just the opposite in the White House. Feingold is a co-sponsor. Cantwell says she will not vote for closure on Dodd's entire financial regulation bill, unless Glass-Steagall is debated and voted.

One of the handful of Republicans against Vitter's amendment, the budget-cut-obsessed Judd Gregg (NH), gave a virtually treasonous speech on the floor. Gregg claimed a great principle of American history was "No government creation of currency and credit. The [Federal Reserve] Open Market Committee must decide!" Gregg made a lengthy and completely incompetent "historical review," claiming that Woodrow Wilson was right to insist on creating a central bank [the Fed] completely independent of elected officials [but not of bankers!]; and that William Jennings Bryan was completely wrong to demand that the government control currency and credit creation. Gregg attacked Bryan, but his treasonous speech was aimed, whether he fully realized it or not, against Abraham Lincoln's Greenback policy and the founding American System policy of 17th-Century Massachusetts.