Matt Taibbi Quotes
Creating legislation is a tough process. But watering down legislation? Strangling it with lawsuits and comment letters and blue-ribbon committees? Not so tough, it turns out.
Taibbi, Matt. "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform." Rolling Stone, 10 May 2012.
With its multiplicity of committees and the polarization of the parties, Congress has been unable to legislate on large, comprehensive problems that involve more than a single issue at a time.
In response to Administration tactics to delay a vote on the Church-Cooper proposal to limit American involvement in Cambodia after June 30, 1970, Senator Cotton asserted:
Conservatives in the Senate were filibustering the bill at the time.
the largest economic and banking reform in decades The Dodd-Frank reform legislation was very complicated. It was extensively debated including attacks against provisions that were not even in the bill (See {632833}.) Few of the supporters and fewer of the opponents understood the bill. Many members on both sides had not even read the entire bill. It passed.
The objective of a large proportion of the Congress then was not to improve the nation or even pass legislation, but to preserve their ideology and attack and weaken the other party. Compromise for example is probably the best legislative practice, but that Congress had a substantial number of Tea Party and other ultra conservatives who believed that any compromise at all was an immoral abandonment of principle.
Matthew C. Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, author of several books, co-host of Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on Substack.
