Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive senator from Vermont, is introducing a bill this week that would break up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks. It would require Treasury Secretary Lew to compile a list of these institutions within 90 days, and after that a year to actually cut them down to a size small enough so that their failures would not require the government to once again bail out these risk-loving giants.
A similar proposal sponsored by Senators David Vitter (R-La.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in the form of an amendment to a senate budget resolution passed that body by a 99-0 vote on March 22. There’s a big difference, however, between a resolution that has no effect as a law and Sanders approach that would be a law. Sanders’ bill would make things real.
This bill is a natural to garner support from Occupy Wall Street — a no-brainer observation that only requires looking at this group’s name. But it could also garner the support of The Tea Party — or at least some elements of that party — which first came into being animated by disgust at the last huge government bailout of Wall Street. Tea Party favorite senators were part of the 99-0 vote for the Brown-Vitter resolution amendment.
This desperately needed Too-Big-To-Fail bank bill will nonetheless likely die, as is so often the case with good pieces of legislation in the Beltway funny house where common sense and common decency tend to succumb to institutional inertia and back room special interest power plays. Unless…
Unless the press piles in on Sanders’ measure big time. If it became THE issue of the week, the month, the congressional calendar, it could conceivably survive and become the law of the land.
One obvious way to help make this happen is simple. Occupy Wall Street is the voice of the progressive left. The Tea Party is the voice of the hard right. If they were to come together publicly on this issue, it’s the kind of quirky joining the press would be on, and on, and on.
So let’s do it, Occupy people. Get on the horn and call the folks at your local Tea Party group. Sponsor joint shouting matches the next time a congress person deigns to come to town. Let this worthy try to explain why he or she supported this Wall Street shrink down in resolution form but won’t push hard for it when it really matters.
(Michael Silverstein’s new comic novel, Murder At Bernstein’s, will be published soon.)