And that's the bottom line, because Linda McMahon for Senate says so. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Linda McMahon has just won the nomination from the Republican Party to run for the United States Senate. One of the two seats for Connecticut is being contested this fall. Linda McMahon is indeed the wife of Vince McMahon Jr., and she is the former CEO of WWE Entertainment. She stepped down from her position in the company to run for the Senate seat that will be vacant soon, as Senator Chris Dodd is retiring as soon as his term expires.

GOP can smell what McMahon is cooking

Linda McMahon’s campaign is getting attention because she is running without taking a dime from taxpayers, any Political Action Committees or from special interest groups or corporations. According to ABC, she’s spent $22 million of her own money on her campaign so far and doesn’t mind spending a lot more between now and November. Her opponent Dick Blumenthal, the Democrat candidate, has served as Attorney General of Connecticut since 1991, after serving terms in the Connecticut House of Representatives and Connecticut Senate.

Is her campaign platform a steel cage?

Linda McMahon is identified as a stringent neo-conservative. Fiscally conservative policies, with emphasis on deregulation and job creation, are big parts of her platform. She expressed agreement with Obama’s approach to the Afghan war, and she is somewhat hawkish on Iran. She’s already created controversy with mainline Republicans, having donated money to a Republican pro-choice PAC, though opposed to partial-birth abortions. She also is far more friendly to LGBT rights than the President is, as she has stated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell should go and the marriage issue should be left to the states, according to an interview with the Connecticut Mirror.

So what’s the bottom line?

Well, it’s another rich and famous person running for office. Not that we haven’t seen that before, but she was the CEO of a company that became the only professional wrestling organization to be publicly traded and almost as popular as NASCAR. (Granted, the McMahons own most of the shares.) She has some very popular platforms, and she may well prove to be exactly what voters are looking for. So what are you gonna do, brother, when Wrestlemania goes to Washington?

Further Reading

ABC

Connecticut Mirror

Senator Harry Reid has failed to get cloture. Image from Wikimedia Commons

In order to head off any attempts at a filibuster, the U.S. Senate has tried to invoke cloture to wrap up debate.  The attempt was unsuccessful, and intense debate is expected to continue unabated for some time. It may take longer than previously thought to get the financial reform bill passed and onto the desk of the President.

Reid fails to get cloture

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called for a vote of cloture in order to head off debate over the financial reform bill, according to Reuters.  The vote, which requires a two-thirds majority, failed 57 to 42.  Cloture is a feature of parliamentary procedure and used to be incredibly rare. The U.S. Senate is still debating portions of the financial reform bill, and the potential for filibuster remains, so Senators may want to get personal loans for some cots and blankets.  Cloture has very specific conditions on how it can be brought about.

Haute Cloture

Cloture is a French word, and the word and meaning is derived from the same Latin word English derived the word closure from, clausura.  In terms of parliamentary procedure, it means that after a motion calling for cloture is passed, only a limited amount of debate can take place afterward.  For the Senate, only 30 more hours of debate total can take place, and no Senator may speak for more than an hour. It is a way to stop pointless and long winded debate and is the way a filibuster is stopped.

Senate unable to close debate

The row that had broken out concerned two amendments, one from Chris Dodd and one from Blanche Lincoln.  Lincoln’s amendment would prevent certain trades by banks, which Dodd is not in favor of.  Republicans oppose the amendments under debate, and the outright dropping of the Volcker rule was barely avoided.  The financial reform bill is still not finished, and it will some time before a final version is ready.

The U.S. Capitol Building. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

An amendment to the financial reform bill, which has been in the spotlight lately, has passed the Senate by an incredibly wide margin.  Included in the amendment are protections that preclude taxpayers from bearing the brunt of the expense of helping huge firms that go down in flames. The amendment to the bill passed 93 to 5, which means the changes made to the bill are things both parties are satisfied with Usually, the only bill that passes that quick is a vote to give legislators more payday cash.

Financial reform bill amendment passes Senate

The Senate voted 93 to 5 for the financial reform bill amendment, and lawmakers spent weeks collaborating to come up with regulations that made both sides of the aisle happy.  The amendment, according to CNN, was co-written by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and only five Senators didn’t vote for it, 2 of which didn’t vote at all.

Too big to pay for

One of the changes that the amendment to the financial reform bill makes is that it places a tax on banks if any bank were to fail in the spectacular manner as several did during the Wall Street collapse.  The previous version would have taxed banks to create a $50 billion emergency fund for failing banks.  The new version still places the burden on investment banks if anyone of their number should fail as badly as they did in this last recession.

Regulatory reforms

There are numerous impacts the financial reform bill amendment would make. The new bi-partisan version of the bill allows the Federal Reserve to lend only to banks that need credit, but otherwise aren’t insolvent.  The FDIC would have to get Congressional approval before paying or guaranteeing any bank debts.  The amendment would also ban from the industry any bank executive or director who engages in illegal or otherwise illicit activity. Also included are new rules that would allow the government to recoup any over-payments on bank debt. In other words, say the government assists a failing bank, but pays a creditor more than they would receive in a bankruptcy.  The government would get the remainder back.

So far, so good, but so what?

At this moment, it’s only an amendment to a bill.  The financial reform bill is not close to passing yet, and it will be weeks before it’s ready to go to the House, never mind the President’s desk. The financial reform bill still has a long road ahead of it.

Senator. Chris Dodd (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

The people of American are looking for debt relief any way they can find it these days, and it appears that the only way true gains in this area are going to be made is if major restructuring of America’s financial regulatory agencies occurs. Along those lines, controversial Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd (who some consider to have turned a blind eye to the financial shenanigans that greased the way for the mortgage industry collapse) is hard at work. He wants to push through a new financial reform plan that would completely change the way the government would control banking oversight and debt relief.

Obama Praised Dodd’s Consumer Protection Agency Work

It appeared that Dodd was preparing to take banking regulation and debt relief in an exciting new direction much in tune with the president’s plans. However, recent signs indicate that Dodd’s plan will be significantly different that what was previously expected by the current administration. Specifically, Dodd wants nearly all bank-supervising powers to be removed from the Federal Reserve and FDIC (where they currently reside). An entirely new agency would pick up the reins. They would be responsible for all national finance institutions as sole regulator and guide toward debt relief on both the institutional and consumer level. It would replace the four federal regulatory agencies that exist.

Enter the Watchdog

Watching out for potential risks to the country’s banking and finance industries would become the responsibility of a new kind of watchdog council that would be a chaired by a single White House official. What this would accomplish is to take the teeth out of the Fed’s ability to conceive of consumer protection and debt relief measures on its own. America’s 12 Federal Reserve Banks would also potentially be in jeopardy or closing, according to the Wall Street Journal.

And guess what? In a time when President Obama constantly extols the virtues of bipartisan support, Senator Dodd’s actions could be seen as somewhat extreme. That’s because Dodd is going after his version of the finance reform/debt relief bill on his own. Sheila Bair of the FDIC is against Dodd’s ideas, and the Journal predicts that Senate Republicans will be as well.

The Frank-Man Commeth

Rep. Barney Frank (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

Rep. Barney Frank and the House Financial Services Committee is currently working on its own debt relief and regulation program. According to the Washington Post, Frank’s bill would take a much more conservative approach to regulatory reform. It would get rid of just the Office of Thrift Supervision. At the same time, rather than stripping the Fed of power, it would give them even more power to step in and control the actions of America’s banks.

Consumer Debt Relief Appears to Be Covered

That’s where the Consumer Financial Protection Agency the House has already concocted comes in. Mortgages, credit cards and various consumer loans will fall under that agency’s jurisdiction. Dodd and Frank are battling for a solution to the problems in the banking industry as a whole. Frank estimates the House will vote on his plan by the end of 2009, but Dodd is attempting to push his plan through even sooner than that, perhaps as early as next week if the Washington Post‘s sources are accurate. Get ready for some major debt relief debate, America.

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