http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36118.html
President
Barack Obama and congressional
Democrats are promising a climactic clash with Wall Street, but there’s a complication in their battle plan: The Democratic Party is closer to corporate America — and to Wall Street in particular — than many Democrats would care to admit.
Former White House counsel Greg Craig has just signed on as an institutional Sherpa for Goldman Sachs, the iconic financial firm facing fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt lobbies for
Goldman Sachs,
Visa and the coal industry. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle — Obama’s first choice to head Health and Human Services — is an adviser for a lobbying firm that represents Charles Schwab,
Comcast, Lockheed Martin, Verizon and a host of other corporate interests.
Attorney General
Eric Holder once lobbied for Global Crossing — sometimes described as the Democratic Enron — and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel made eight figures in a little more than two years as the Chicago-based managing director at Wasserstein Perella & Co. between
jobs as a senior aide in President Bill Clinton’s White House and as the congressman representing Illinois’s 5th District.
And the Democrats rode to their majorities in the House and the Senate on a wave of cash Emanuel and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer helped them raise from Wall Street. Earlier this month, a hedge fund manager at the center of the Goldman Sachs fraud case held a fundraiser for Schumer in New York.
“It’s pathetic,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said of news that Goldman Sachs has hired Craig. “But it’s what goes on around here.”
The
Republican Party is still emphatically aligned with business, but in most cases unapologetically so. For Democrats, the dance is trickier: How do you reap the financial rewards of corporate America without offending your core political beliefs — or your party’s committed base?
Democrats say their willingness to tackle Wall Street with a tough regulatory reform bill is the best evidence that they aren’t compromised by their corporate connections. But the regulatory reform push is also evidence that they know just how hard the political winds have shifted against a pro-business wing of the party that gained influence when Democrats were out of power.
The sensitivity is so great that, when a little-known aide to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank
jumped ship for K Street earlier this month, Frank took the unusual step of vilifying him in public.
“I wanted to make clear I share the unhappiness of people at this, and my intention [is] to prohibit any contact between him and members of the staff for as long as I have any control over the matter,” Frank said in a press release. “I am therefore instructing the staff of the Financial Services Committee to have no contact whatsoever with [the former aide] on any matters involving financial regulation.”
Sensing partisan advantage, Obama — a onetime Wall Street favorite who raised nearly $1 million from Goldman Sachs employees for his 2008 campaign — has been blasting away at Republicans, most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who opposes the current Senate version of an overhaul of financial services regulation.
“Now, the Senate Republican leader, he paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago. He took along the chairman of their campaign committee. He met with some of the movers and shakers up there,” Obama said at a Monday night fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “I don’t know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform.”
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Im sick of these Republicans sleeping with big business.
Don't think so. The fear that some have of loosing everything is causing them to grab hold of everything. Like a drowning man they will drag everything they can lay hold of down with them. They are moral less people.
