IMPORTANT: Justin Fox of Time gets his facts wrong on McCain, Biden, and Glass-Steagall repeal

[brentspeak]

Concerning the Phil Gramm-led deregulation of the banking sector back in 1999, Fox wrote:

This was a bipartisan movement: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation passed the Senate 90-8 (Joe Biden was for it; John McCain didn't vote, but had supported the bill in an earlier roll call).

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1841981-2,00.html

The same misinformation concerning the actual vote -- and McCain and Biden's actual votes -- was also propagated this same week by the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto.

However, a DailyKos member did some research, and discovered that the "90-8" November, 1999 Senate vote was simply a vote which took place many months after the bill had already been passed. The actual vote on the bill's passage took place in May of that year, 54-44, with Ernest Hollings the only Democrat voting for passage; Biden voted "nay", McCain "yea". The 90-8 vote was for a standard "conference report" designed to reconcile differing language between the House and Senate versions of the bill; the bill's passage was already a done deal.

Read: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/16/203823/008/1013/601053

I emailed Time with a correction by clicking on Justin Fox's name in the Time article. If you agree that his article's info was wrong, I urge you to do the same.

[calmblueocean]

1. K&Red

going off to send my e-mail now

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Gee..I cannot help but wonder just how UNintentional this mistake was...

[Sedona]

3. done k&r n/t

[FLyellowdog]

4. Email sent

[girl gone mad]

5. Done. n/t

[brentspeak]

6. s/kick

:kick:

[Marsala]

7. Conference report = Final draft of bill

If the conference report vote had failed, the bill would have died. Biden did vote for it. But, so did practically everyone else. It was a failure of bipartisanship.

We should stick to blaming the author: Gramm, the guy who thinks we're a nation of whiners.