Reply #92: Why Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur voted against the Wall Street bill

[Better Believe It]

Why a bank-bashing populist Democrat opposed the Wall Street ‘reform’ bill
By John Nichols, Capital Times associate editor
July 1,2010

No member of the House has been a harsher critic of the abuses of big banks and Wall Street than Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur.

No member of the House has been more on target in her condemnations and her calls for reform.

During the bank bailout fight of 2008, Kaptur became a national folk hero as millions of Americans clicked on YouTube videos of her ripping the bankers who had come to Congress looking for handouts. “The crimes of Wall Street will make Watergate look like penny ante thieves,” she declared.

So how did Kaptur vote on the final version of the optimistically named Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009?

But, while Democrats generally backed the bill, Kaptur cast a “no” vote.

A loud and unapologetic “No!”

Why did the most ardent reformer in the House reject what she dismissed as a “so-called bill”?

Kaptur told the House that the measure often seems to “support the very same big banks (that caused the crisis) and not the American people and the communities in which we live, in the Main Street that all of us are sworn to represent.”

In particular, she complained: “The bill allows financial power to create wealth, the bankers’ awesome power, to be closely held in a few Wall Street and Charlotte-based megabanks. The bill does not address the business model of credit rating agencies or how interwoven these nongovernmental agencies are with the institutions they rate. The bill does not require that all derivatives be traded through transparent exchanges. The bill does not adequately support both agencies dedicated to finding and fighting fraud in our financial system, and it really doesn’t do anything to address the continuing mortgage foreclosure hemorrhage, the crisis going on across our country.”

In other words, this is not reform.

And unlike most members of the House -- Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives -- Marcy Kaptur is serious about reform.

Read the full article at:

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/article_06798d20-5afb-535a-baee-b1651ba6205b.html