Mr. Shaman
Senior Member
- May 4, 2010
- 23,892
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"Washington has fallen in love with "comprehensive reform" -- legislation aimed at solving all aspects of a big problem in one dramatic and history-making move.
We saw it with health care. Now comprehensive financial regulatory reform has passed in the House, with a Senate vote expected soon. Up next may come energy legislation, following President Obama's Oval Office speech last month proclaiming a new "national mission" to wean America off fossil fuels. Comprehensive immigration reform, which failed back in 2007, waits in the wings, with the president calling for such an effort in a July 1 address. And a push for comprehensive fiscal reform will surely come on the heels of the recommendations this fall from Obama's deficit commission.
Instead of striding boldly into the future, we should grope our way cautiously forward, ever ready to back up upon encountering an obstacle and always prepared to consider an alternative path if the road is blocked, or to abandon the effort and simply live with frustration if there is no way ahead. Instead of aspiring to achieve irrevocable, comprehensive reform by the second Monday of next month, let's consider reforms that are piecemeal and reversible if we discover they do not work.
Today's financial reformers would do well to remember that Franklin Roosevelt's administration dealt with financial regulation in numerous bills over several years. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was modified by the 1935 Banking Act; the Securities Act of 1933, which required public disclosure of corporate information to shareholders, was followed by the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, which created the Securities and Exchange Commission. So even during the Great Depression, financial regulations were assembled piece by piece, not all at once.
Obama and Congress can learn even more from FDR, whose accomplishments were the result more of ceaseless trial and error than of all-or-nothing reform. "The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation," he declared during the 1932 campaign. "It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."
Whew! Hard TIMES are comin' for "conservatives"; variation....risk....tryin' something NEW!
We Libs/Progressives need to start carrrying-around flasks of Scotch.....to help 'em thru The Process; consider ourselves Corpsmen of The New Millennium!!!!
We Libs/Progressives need to start carrrying-around flasks of Scotch.....to help 'em thru The Process; consider ourselves Corpsmen of The New Millennium!!!!
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