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Obama the Chicken-hearted

When I voted for President Obama, I was hoping that my generation would experience what great leadership in the White House was like.  Past generations had - FDR, Kennedy and even Johnson (as it relates to civil rights).  But my hopes for such an experience are DEAD.  Instead, what we have a president quicker to compromise in the interest of getting “something” done instead of fighting for principals.  First instance was the President’s pathetic handling of the health care reform debate and now, his compromising on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). 

As a little review: this is what the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) should be. 

Today (2/25), there are reports in the media (here and here)that the Obama Administration is ready to ‘compromise’ on the CFPA and not insist that CFPA be an independent agency and instead make it part of another department or another agency.  Financial conglomerates/lobbyists will be very happy with that because it makes it much easier to render CFPA ineffective.  This is what Elizabeth Warren, a long-time advocate for CFPA said:

“The CFPA is the heart of what makes regulatory reform work,” Warren said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “The consumer credit market is where the biggest abuses were. It is where families will be most directly affected and it is where the American people will see change. CFPA is how to make clear that regulatory reform is for them, and that it isn’t a game among insiders.

“We just can’t pass a regulatory reform bill that acquiesces to the industry on every front and where everything is so watered down that nobody has to take a hard vote,” she said.

“It’s not ok to weaken the agency so much that, while everyone can vote yes and pretend to support consumers’ right to a fair deal, nothing really changes. I want a strong agency, and if there’s not going to be a strong agency, then I at least want to see an up-or-down vote on it. Let’s see a vote.”

The “compromise” the Obama Administration is considering would weaken the CFPA to the point that “nothing really changes”. 

But this has become a very disturbing pattern on the part of this White House.  It either, campaigns on, talks about, or proposes ‘progressive’ or ‘populist’ ideas but when push comes shove - forget about it.  This administration won’t fight for what they talk about - instead we see more “compromise”. 

Examples:

1)  2009 Stimulus - Christina Romer, Chairwoman of President’s Council of Economic Advisers, advised back in November-December 2008 that it would take $1.2 trillion in stimulus to have an effect on economy.  Guess what, Obama proposes and much smaller stimulus bill then compromises even further by agreeing to more tax cuts (least bang for buck) than job creating programs such as infrastructure building.  Oh, BTW, it looks like we are getting a second stimulus - in the form of a “jobs bill”.  Why didn’t they did it right the first time?

2)  Health care reform - Obama campaigns on public option (despite what he says now) then during the spring and summer sends all kinds of mix messages about whether he still supports public option or even is willing to fight for health care reform meanwhile a vocal minority grows more influential.  Today, Obama is not willing to fight for the public option and instead is willing to FORCE (by law) working class families to buy over priced and expensive private health insurance.

3)  Financial regulatory reform - besides CFPA, as a means to appear like it was not favoring Wall Street too much - it proposes the “Volcker Rule” - very late in the game.  It was all show - now comes word that it will even “compromise” on that proposal. 

These are three huge agenda items - all with significant ‘compromises’ to them.  He is certainly not doing anything to help us with these compromises.  Question: is there anything this Administration is not willing to compromise on? 

Good luck.

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