On Tuesday, the White House again whispered into the wind its displeasure with the provision tucked into a government spending bill that will deregulate the derivatives market.
“The White House strongly opposes it and doesn’t think it’s a good idea,” spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters. Nevertheless he assured everyone that “once the White Has receives [the bill], the president will sign it.”
“We’ll get it done in order to avoid a government shutdown,” he added.
Sound reasoning, except a government shutdown was never in the cards. As the fate of the so-called “Cromnibus” was in limbo last week, lawmakers readied a fail-safe that would have prevented a government shutdown. It was a 3-month clean spending measure that could quickly pass the House and Senate. The White House could have accepted it, and lived to fight another day without Wall Street receiving its happy ending.
Instead, financiers strutted away from the whole debacle with another item on their Christmas list marked off—the ability to trade risky instruments with retail savings backed by the federal government. In return, the White House bought itself a whopping six months without having to stave off a shutdown.
For six whole months of “economic certainty”, President Obama and his centrist allies in Congress gave up the farm.
It didn’t have to be that way. Just five days ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sparked a revolt against the secret Citigroup-written provision. Most House Democrats heeded her call and united to nearly kill the bill in a procedural vote.
But in just a few hours, that insurgency was splintered after the White House lobbied House Democrats to appeal to their better angels’ contributors – people holding campaign purse strings, like Jamie Dimon who also worked the phones to sway House Democrats.
As the Sentinel reported last week, the bill eventually passed thanks in large part to the House Democrats who had, in the previous election cycle, collected the most money in their caucus from Citigroup and JP Morgan. Democrats in the Senate eventually assented to the wishes of their party leader, too, and the Cromnibus received the stamp of approval from Congress.
And while the Congressman with the ink on his hands, Citibank errand boy Kurt Yoder (R-Kansas.), is reportedly refusing to talk to reporters, the White House is defending the whole entire cock-up—a mess, it swears, that it definitely did not want.
“The process surrounding this omnibus proposal is a significant improvement that will have some significant,” Earnest started before catching himself. “Or at least will have some economic benefit for the country because it does lock in these spending levels for the next 9 months.”
And yea, throughout the land, the children feasted on certainty for an additional six months.
What will an even-stronger Republican Congress and Jamie Dimon get then?
