WASHINGTON — With the window rapidly closing on their once- unstoppable majority, Democrats in Congress are about to learn an ugly lesson with their financial regulation reform bill.
No matter how much they beckon a mob carrying pitchforks by demonizing Wall Street, they will not be ramming this legislation through on straight partisan lines the way they did with health care.
The ink had barely dried on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil complaint against Goldman Sachs yesterday before Democrats touted it as a call to action to pass their financial overhaul bill.
Senate Republicans — emboldened by their still meager, but increasing, power on Capitol Hill — responded with a united front announcing that every one of them will stand against the Democratic bill.
And before the sun had set, the GOP had won a key concession — the Obama administration was urging Senate Democrats in Congress to kill their plan to create a $50 billion bank liquidation fund that Republicans have tarred as yet another “bailout.”
Unlike with health care, if the GOP stands united, its chances of fending off the Democrats’ most extreme approaches to financial reform are high.
Indeed, this is a very different Washington than it was a year ago or even three months ago.
When President Obama and Democrats embarked on their lark to overhaul health care, they were coming off a historic election victory and still riding fairly high in the polls.
They had momentum at their backs and a mandate in their hands. And they spent every bit of it shoving health care down Republicans’ throats.
Today, Democrats are still struggling to explain to voters why their health-care cures are good for America.
And some unnerved Democrats are starting to balk over concerns that their party leaders just might be leading them across a bridge to nowhere.
Meddling with the economy is not the same as tinkering with health care.
If all their do-gooder efforts to fix Wall Street just run off more jobs, it will be Democrats in Congress in the unemployment lines after this year’s elections.