Sen. Franken Becomes A Cosponsor Of Vitter/Coburn Amendment

Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) said he is trying to co-sponsor the amendment -- but that Coburn and Vitter won't let him. Coburn and Vitter are planning to offer the amendment during the Senate floor debate on healthcare reform."They've not said yes to allow me to be a co-sponsor," Brown told The Hill on Thursday.

First reported by The Hill, GOP Sens. Vitter and Coburn had ignored requests by Sen. Sherrod Brown to become a cosponsor of an amendment forcing members of Congress onto the public option.

The Hill continued:

Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) said he is trying to co-sponsor the amendment -- but that Coburn and Vitter won't let him. Coburn and Vitter are planning to offer the amendment during the Senate floor debate on healthcare reform.

"They've not said yes to allow me to be a co-sponsor," Brown told The Hill on Thursday. "I've called their office four times. I'm proud of the public option, I think it would be great and we ought to join it and show the country how good it is. I think my interest may be more genuine than theirs, but I'd like to work with them if they'll let me. If they just want to score partisan points, I still want to work with them."

Undeterred, Sen. Franken beat them at their own game.

–Media Matters Action Network

The Lost Weekend

By GAIL COLLINS

The Senate is going to be in session all weekend, debating the big health care bill and arguing about which direction the cost-curve is heading. This is a positive development on two counts. It keeps senators off the streets while providing much-needed employment in the chart-making sector of our economy.

Or we could just lock them in a basement until they’re done squabbling. Either way is good, but the basement option would have the advantage of covering some of the less-active debaters with an attractive coat of mildew. In any case, I guarantee you that the number of normal Americans who will pay attention can be numbered in the low single digits.

So as a public service to the nonlistening audience, let me give you a summary of the important action so far:

ROUND ONE Republicans: Let’s get rid of all the Medicare savings in the bill. Think of the seniors!

Democrats: Yettaruttayetta.

ROUND TWO Mammograms! Everybody loves them. Can’t have enough.

ROUND THREE Republicans: Let’s get rid of part of the Medicare savings in the bill. Think of the seniors!

Democrats: Ruttayettarutta.

Is that perfectly clear? Good. Now we will return to our regularly scheduled conversation. Did you see that hot reality show “Hoarders” on A&E the other night? What about that lady who hoarded her dead cats? If “Hoarders” gets superpopular, do you think lots of people will start putting dead cats in their living room just so they can get on TV and be famous? Maybe somebody will try to bring dead cats to a state dinner at the White House! Does the Secret Service have a plan to avert this?

Sorry. I’ll behave. Back to the health care bill.

The Republicans are the fiscal conservatives in Congress, at least in the years when they aren’t actually in power. They were never going to rally around an expensive new government program that fails to provide a single new market for corn-based products.

But you would expect them to try to push the whole project in the most economical direction possible.

For instance, the bill would establish an independent commission on Medicare payment rates. This is a very big deal and you are going to have to take my word that health care economists fall over with excitement when it comes up.

But the Senate Democrats’ current version of the bill would only allow the panel experts to act when Medicare spending rises at a faster rate than other health care spending. Since health care spending has been going through the roof, we’re talking about waiting until Medicare spending goes through the ozone layer.

Obviously, this is an area where the Republicans would want to swing into action. And they did. They prepared an amendment eliminating the Medicare panel entirely.

In fact, G.O.P. senators appear to have amendments aimed at wiping out virtually all the cost-cutting the Democrats have put in the bill, including productivity adjustments and incentives for innovation in health care delivery.

If they can’t kill the bill completely, Republicans who are not from Maine seem intent on raising its price tag. While terrifying senior citizens in a cynical attempt to influence their vote in the next election cycle. Although I’m sure Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma just misspoke when he said: “I have a message for you: You’re going to die sooner."

On Friday, much of the debate was directed at Medicare Advantage. This is a program that flourished during the privatization craze. And like many attempts to save money by shoehorning private businesses into government programs, it wound up costing a ton. The Medicare Advantage policyholders cost the government 14 percent more than regular Medicare recipients, although they do often get extra benefits, sometimes including free Band-Aids or gym memberships.

Now let us be fair. There are some good services in the Advantage mix, and gym memberships are in and of themselves a fine thing. But you would think the political party that eviscerated the Clinton stimulus plan over an appropriation for late-night basketball programs would really be ticked at the idea that we’re providing a 14 percent subsidy to some Medicare recipients so they can have access to Stairmasters.

Au contraire. In fact, on Thursday Senator Orrin Hatch proposed an amendment that would eliminate the entire $120 billion in Medicare Advantage savings from the bill.

There is no sane explanation for all this other than crass political calculation. On Thursday, Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat who’s up for election next year, introduced an amendment specifically promising that Medicare recipients would not lose any of their current guaranteed benefits. It passed 100 to 0. Meanwhile, Colorado voters were getting robocalls from John McCain warning that the health care bill was going to cut their “vital Medicare coverage.”

Now, about those dead cats.

Virtuous Bankers? Really!?!

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion.

In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are “mad and bent out of shape” at blood-sucking banks.

“I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O., told the reporter John Arlidge.

But the little people who are boiling simply don’t understand. And Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” doesn’t understand.

Banks, Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.

“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital,” he said. “Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.”

When Arlidge asked whether it’s possible to make too much money, whether Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on raking it in, getting richer than God, Blankfein grinned impishly and said he was “doing God’s work.”

Whether he knows it, he’s referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism — except, of course, the Calvinists would have been outraged by the banks’ vicious — not virtuous — cycle of greed and concupiscence.

Blankfein’s trickle-down catechism isn’t working. Now we have two economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with society.

Goldmine Sachs, as it’s known, is out for Goldmine Sachs.

As many Americans continue to struggle, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses — up 60 percent from last year.

The saying used to be, whatever happens, the lawyers win. Now, it’s whatever happens, the bankers win.

Under pressure from regulators, who were trying to ensure that long-term performance was rewarded, the banks agreed to award more in stock, deferring cash payments.

But as The Times reported this week, the Goldman executives who got stock options instead of bonuses last year, at market lows, got a windfall — so it had nothing to do with bank employees’ performance.

“The company gave its general counsel, for example, 104,868 stock options and 14,117 shares in December, when the bank’s stock was around $78,” Louise Story wrote for The Times. “Now the bank’s shares have more than doubled in value, making that stock and option award worth nearly $12 million.”

As one former Goldman banker told Arlidge, the culture there is “completely money-obsessed. ... There’s always room — need — for more. If you are not getting a bigger house or a bigger boat, you’re falling behind. It’s an addiction.”

It’s an addiction that Washington has done little to quell. President Obama has not been strong on the issue, and Timothy Geithner coddles the wanton bankers whenever they freak out that they might not be able to put in their new pools next summer.

The bankers try to dismiss calls for regulation as populist ravings, but the insane inequity of it cannot be dismissed.

No sooner had the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd announced his plan to overhaul financial regulation Tuesday than compensation experts declared it toothless.

The banks and their lobbyists wheedled concession after concession out of Washington and knocked down proposed inhibition after inhibition. Now the banks are laughing all the way to the bank.

“Saturday Night Live” was tougher on Goldman Sachs than the government, giving the firm flak about commandeering 200 doses of the swine flu vaccine — the same amount as Lenox Hill Hospital got — while so many at-risk Americans wait.

“Can you not read how mad people are at you?” demanded Amy Poehler. “When most people saw the headline ‘Goldman Sachs Gets Swine Flu Vaccine’ they were superhappy until they saw the word ‘vaccine.’ ”

Seth Meyers chimed in: “Also, Centers for Disease Control, you sent the vaccine to Wall Street before schools and hospitals? Really!?! Were you worried the swine flu might spread to the Hamptons and St. Barts? These are the least contagious people in the world. They don’t even touch their own car-door handles.”

And as far as doing God’s work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.

Republicans Block Dodd's Effort to Protect Consumers from Credit Card Rate Hikes

Senate Republicans blocked Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodds (D-CT) attempt to pass legislation to stop credit card interest rate hikes.