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How 'Dodd-Frank' is becoming the new 'Obamacare'
[Washington Post] If you don't know what the Dodd-Frank Act is, Rep. Paul Ryan...U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party. He proposed an alternative to President Obama's 2011 budget and made himself the target of both Democrat and Republican verbal pies... (R-Wis.) told an audience last weekend, "it's Obamacare ... aka the Affordable Care Act, an ineptly designed and worse executed piece of legislation designed to bring 17 percent of the U.S. economy under the direct control of the government. The previous iteration, known as Hillarycare, was laughed out of Washington. This stinker was passed on a party-line vote without being read... for banks." Ryan, outgoing chairman of the House Budget Committee, was echoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who's been using that expression since at least April (and he used it again Wednesday night). Expect to hear the expression more, particularly once a new, probably-Republican-led Senate takes over on Capitol Hill in January. Dodd-Frank, a set of financial regulations passed in the wake of the financial crisis, has been cited by financial news hounds, liberal publications, and (most importantly) Republican senators as a likely target for overhaul if the Senate changes hands. In particular, Dodd-Frank's "Volcker Rule," which limits speculative trading by banks, has been a Republican punching bag since its passage in 2010. The origin of the newly in-vogue phrase appears to be a April 2012 Weekly Standard piece by Peter Wallison. "The best way to understand the Dodd-Frank Act," Wallison wrote, "is to think of it as Obamacare for the financial industry. Like its health care counterpart, it leaves the members of the massive financial services industry as privately-owned firms, but blankets them with so much regulation that they are no longer really independent operators." Posted by: Fred 2014-11-01 |
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