Chris Dodd on Economic Reform: “We’re Close.”
“This is high noon for financial reforms,” Meet the Press moderator David Gregory intoned at the top of the show. “The big question is: Do you have a deal?” he asked guests Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). “We’re getting there, we’re close, we’ve got some more work to do,” Dodd answered. “We’re not there yet, but I would hope that we could get the votes tomorrow… to start the debate.”
Bob Corker: Republicans “Very Likely” to Block Financial-Reform Debate
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was decidedly less optimistic on This Week, saying it’s “very likely” all 41 Republicans will block the debate if bipartisan compromises are not reached. “But I think it's very, very important that we reach that bipartisan agreement first, because in the Senate, as you know, it takes 60 votes to change anything,” Corker said.
Pundits Brawl Over Clinton/Limbaugh
Howie Kurtz must have slipped some espresso shots in his guests’ coffee before taping Reliable Sources, because this was the liveliest debate we’ve seen on a Sunday morning show in a good, long while. Joan Walsh (Salon.com), Amy Holmes ( America’s Morning News) and Chrystia Freeland (Reuters) faced off on the recent Clinton/Limbaugh imbroglio. Freeland carefully toed the line between both camps, saying both the right and the left have to keep their inflammatory rhetoric in check, while Holmes and Walsh (loudly) defended the right and the left, respectively.
Mitch McConnell Will Only Filibuster “Really Bizarre” Supreme Court Pick
After the grilling Sonia Sotomayor received before being confirmed to the Supreme Court, it’s only natural that Chris Wallace ask Sen. Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday whether he planned on filibustering the nominee who will fill the spot being vacated by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. “It’s highly unlikely,” McConnell said, “unless the nominee is an extraordinary individual, outside the mainstream, with really bizarre views.” What constitutes “bizarre” by McConnell’s definition remains to be seen.
Geithner “Very Confident” Republicans Will Vote for Economic Reform
Count Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner firmly in the optimist camp. He told Fareed Zakaria he was “very confident” that Republicans would eventually get on board with economic reform. “After a crisis that caused eight million people to lose their jobs, this degree of pain and suffering, I think everybody has to be for reform,” Geithner said.
Jennifer Granholm: Economy Has “Hit Bottom”
On State of the Union Sunday, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said that she thinks the economy has hit rock bottom. The glass-half-empty reading? That sounds pretty terrible. On the glass-half-full side, however, there's nowhere to go but up!
Would Financial Reform Have Prevented the Economic Meltdown?
Hindsight is 20/20, but that didn’t stop Bob Schieffer from asking Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers whether the current proposed financial reform could staved off, or prevented entirely, the economic crisis of 2008 had it been presented earlier. “I think so,” Summers replied, listing the plethora of problems—like troubled institutions like Lehman Brothers and AIG—which would have been headed off at the pass.