A Republican takeover of the House was expected to make the new Congress friendlier to big business, and incoming GOP leaders are moving fast to turn those expectations into reality.
They are already promising less government involvement in the private sector and more scrutiny of new regulations.
One of the first things they are pushing to do is to water down Wall Street reform. Analysts are already predicting that President Obama's proposed bank tax is dead.
Given the Democrats' narrow majority in the Senate and their numerous divisions, the GOP hopes to actually send a bill reversing some of the reforms to the president's desk.
There have been strong indications that the Republicans will find support on this from some Senate Democrats. Sen. Max Baucus, Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said Nov. 3 that he would "pursue vigorous oversight" of the financial reform law and, obliging Republicans ahead of time, said he will try to reverse the new regulations on derivatives.
Baucus had to be dragged by the Obama administration, kicking and screaming, into supporting finance reform in the first place.
Also in the Senate, retiring banking committee chair Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., is expected to be replaced by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. Citibank operates its credit card business out of South Dakota and Johnson is friendlier to the finance industry than Dodd was.
Confirming that some Democrats will join in dismantling finance reform, Johnson said Nov. 3 that "lawmakers should wait to see the specific derivatives rules proposed by regulators before seeking revisions."
Another part of finance reform the GOP wants to dismantle is the newly-created consumer protection bureau.
"Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee have made no secret of their desire to defund and defang portions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law," wrote the Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo. "Particularly the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which does not stand on its own, divorced from the Congressional appropriations process, until July 2011). And now that they've gained a majority in the House of Representatives, the GOP's game plan is kicking into gear."
Advocates for campaign finance reform note that the assault on finance reform is what would be expected after an unprecedented corporate spend-fest that successfully shaped a radically more business-friendly Congress.
"A relatively small number of deep-pocketed donors exerted an outsize influence on Tuesday's [election] results," said the New York Times in a Nov. 3 editorial.
"The fight for working men and women goes on," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said at a post-election press conference. "The big corporations are going to try to get what they paid for. Working men and women will fight, instead, for what they need."
Image: Wall Street's bull // CC 2.0
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