GOP Still Wants No Rules For Wall Street

(The graphic above was found at the website called The Big Picture.)

There is no doubt that the root cause of this recession was the trickle-down economic policies of Republicans -- which were started in the Reagan administration, and accelerated in the administration of Bush II. This policy deregulated Wall Street, redistributed most income to the richest Americans, encouraged the outsourcing of American jobs, and created the widest gap in wealth and income since before the Great Depression. But the actual trigger of the recession was the meltdown of Wall Street -- which sucked trillions of dollars out of the economy and cost American workers millions of jobs.

It became obvious to anyone with half a brain that Wall Street needed to be re-regulated to prevent another meltdown and allow the economy to recover. And President Obama (and congressional Democrats) have tried to do that. The Dodd-Frank bill was passed. This bill did not do everything that needs to be done in re-regulating Wall Street, but it was a good start.

The problem is that the Republicans are not allowing adequate funding for the new law -- and a law that is not funded adequately to allow proper oversight is as bad as no law at all. The Republicans could stop the Wall Street reform, but by being in control of the House of Representatives they are now trying to starve it to death. The two organizations that have the task of overseeing Wall Street are the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) -- and both are underfunded. And if the Republicans have their way, they will lose even more funding.

In House committees, the Republicans have recently voted to cut $25 million from the CFTC budget, and to fund the SEC budget at $245 million less than is needed by the agency to enforce the law on Wall Street. Once again, the congressional Republicans have shown they care more for the Wall Street bankers than either the American economy or the citizens of the United States (who will undoubtably have to foot the bill for the next meltdown, just like they did for the last one -- remember the $700 billion bailout using taxpayer money?).

This is just one more reason (among many) to vote against the Republican Party in November.