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There wasn't a single Republican in the room on April 28, but Wall Street was well represented.

House Democrats had gathered inside the Financial Services Committee for a special minority hearing to discuss the dangers of rolling back the Dodd-Frank Act's sweeping regulations. Instead of bankers or traders or regulators, Democrats called none other than Sen. Elizabeth Warren to testify.

Warren loves to talk tough as though she is the crusading scourge of Wall Street. But is that really so?

There was a tension over what to do with Dodd-Frank. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said just after the 2016 election, "I wouldn't want regulation to be repealed in total." In a 2013 interview, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon bragged that Dodd-Frank helped his bottom line by building a "bigger moat" making it harder for competitors to get into the citadel of riches. As Congress considered the bill in 2010, Blankfein admitted that his bank would be "among the biggest beneficiaries" of Dodd-Frank.

So Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling hit the bullseye when he called the faux hearing "awkward for the Democrats."

"Barack Obama is pocketing $400,000 for a Wall Street speech and Prof. Warren is joining Wall Street CEOs in defending Dodd-Frank. How awkward for the Democrats," Hensarling said. "Community banks and credit unions are supporting the Financial CHOICE Act," Hensarling's bill to replace Dodd-Frank. "Wall Street CEOs and Democrats are the ones saying, Don't repeal Dodd-Frank.' "

The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday added heft to Hensarling's argument. It scored the CHOICE Act as saving taxpayers more than $24 billion, in a very special and telling way. The CBO reports that the bill "would repeal the FDIC's authority to use the [Orderly Liquidation Fund] to resolve large, systemically important financial firms (including banks and nonbank firms) that become or are in danger of becoming insolvent, subject to certain conditions."

The translation of this legalese is that Dodd-Frank's process for liquidating big banks risks taxpayer money. By removing that risk, the CHOICE bill would reduce the deficit. The odds of a bailout through the OLF is small, the CBO said, but it's still a risk. "Although the probability that the FDIC would have to liquidate a systemically important firm in any year is small, the potential associated cash flows would probably be large." By CBO's accounting, removing this risk counts as a $15.5 billion in savings over a decade.

Here's the other telling part of the CBO report. It says the biggest banks don't want to be freed from Dodd-Frank's regulations. Let's just say that again: big banks don't want to be freed from Dodd-Frank regulations. And we're supposed to believe the Democrats are crusaders against big banks? Seriously?

Dodd-Frank imposed regulations on banks with the aim of preserving safety and soundness. They were complicated, complex, and costly. The CHOICE Act's name derives in part from the choice it offers banks, the option to get out from the under these rules and all dealings with regulators and reporting requirements by setting aside more reserves as a bigger cushion. In other words, if a bank takes the traditional approach to safety and soundness, which is to set aside sufficient reserves, it doesn't have to live by some of Dodd-Frank's other rules.

But the big guys won't take this offer. "CBO anticipates that, for example, the eight large banks headquartered in the United States that are characterized as globally systemic important banks (G-SIBs) would not make the election because they would have to raise much more capital," the CBO concludes.

The clear implication is that the behemoths, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley, are content with Dodd-Frank's regulations. They can afford the lawyers, lobbyists, and financial gymnastics to fit their risk-taking into whatever rules the regulators (many of whom will someday work for the banks they are regulating) throw at them.

Regulation of any industry adds to costs, which big business is most able to absorb. The more government gets involved, the bigger the advantage for banks who have the best team of lawyers and lobbyists. And that's never Mom n' Pop of community banks.

The CHOICE Act would take some deregulatory steps that please the big banks, including repealing some Dodd-Frank rules for all banks and taming the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Nonetheless, the CBO report helps rebut a standard Democratic myth, that their big-government policies stick it to the big guys while the GOP's opposition sticks it to the little guys.

The truth, which the big bankers admit, is that regulation and bailouts, that is, big government, is their preferred environment.

When it comes to banking, as when it comes to so many other things such as job creation, the Democratic Party is the party of the 'haves' and the GOP is the party of the 'have-nots.' That's doesn't fit with popular political myth, but it's the truth. It's a pity the Republicans are so bad at conveying this message, but that's another story.

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Big banks love Democrats' big government - Washington Examiner

Unless the Trump-Russia nexus is much deeper and darker than it appears, the intelligence disclosure to Russia most likely doesnt expose Trump to any legal jeopardy, but the legal scholars of the website Lawfarewhich is not exactly a hotbed of resistance organizingreasoned persuasively that the breach may have violated his oath of office.

Congress has alleged oath violationsalbeit violations tied to criminal allegations or breaches of statutory obligationsall three times it has passed or considered seriously articles of impeachment against presidents, they wrote. Theres thus no reason why Congress couldnt consider a grotesque violation of the Presidents oath as a standalone basis for impeachmenta high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself.

It is certainly awkward that Trump made himself vulnerable to impeachment so quickly after inauguration, but that is a testament to his overreach, not Democrats.

The central risk of admitting this publicly isnt overreach so much as over-promising. Republicans in Congress arent likely to impeach Trump, and even if Democrats reclaim control of both the House and Senate next year, removing him from office would require many Republicans to vote to convict him. But this is only a problem if Democrats are incapable of distinguishing between the abstract merits of impeaching Trump and the political feasibility of it. By impeaching Clinton, Republicans demonstrated that its possible for the political climate to allow for the impeachment of officials who do not deserve it. Our current circumstances are precisely backward. Trump deserves impeachment urgently, but politics will insulate him from it for the foreseeable future.

But that shouldnt spook Democrats out of telling voters they understand how critical removing Trump from office isand that they will fight as hard as they can to do so, even if they ultimately fall short. In many ways the 2016 Democratic primary underscored the importance of finding this very kind of middle ground between promising to deliver popular endslike Medicare for alland opposing those ends outright on political-feasibility grounds. The promise to fight is an easy promise to keep.

I know that there are those who are talking about Well, were gonna get ready for next election, Waters, the House Democrat, rightly said last week. No. We cant wait that long. We dont need to wait that long. He will have destroyed this country by then. We cannot wake up every morning to another crisis, to another scandal.

It is extremely unlikely that Trump will find remedies for the problems hes created for himself by the end of next yearthat he will liquidate his business, disclose his finances, nominate a consensus FBI director, and be fully exonerated by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller. Unless Trump does, he should not be president, and politicians arent serving the public well by pretending otherwise.

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Democrats Should Proudly Call for Trump's Impeachment - New Republic

Every controversy enveloping President Donald Trump spurs Democratic optimism about their partys future prospects. And just as the maneuvering for 2020 has started, so, too, has speculation about likely nominees.

Based on recent presidential campaign history, the ultimate Democratic winner might well be one of those making early trips to Iowa or New Hampshire.

But early polls and dope sheets will almost certainly be wrong or at least misleading.

More likely than not, the next president, to be elected in either 2020 or 2024, will be someone barely on the current radar screen. (Trump has already begun his own re-election race, but Republican 2020 speculation may be even less predictable than Democratic.)

Just look back four years to the initial jockeying to succeed Barack Obama. A 2013 fivethirtyeight.com analysis of early 2016 polling showed Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida leading 13 other Republicans. Not even mentioned: Trump, who even then was thinking of running but was not being taken seriously.

Among Democrats, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming front-runner, as she had been eight years earlier when she wound up losing to Obama. The seven others with some support did not include Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who nearly took the nomination from Clinton in 2016.

The next Democratic race will probably resemble the large 2016 GOP field, attracted by Trumps low approval numbers and his failure to expand his political base into believing that one of them will win in 2020. In a recent Fox News poll, a significant majority said theyd likely vote for someone new against Trump.

Those numbers, of course, are hardly more meaningful than the recent analysis by CNNs Chris Cillizza, listing 22 potential Democratic candidates, of whom three he said have a real chance to win the nomination if they run: Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Sanders will be 78, Biden 77 and Warren 70 in 2020, and many Democrats will want someone younger.

His lists main value may be its inclusiveness, though he omitted such rising younger Democrats as former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who might satisfy voters likely desire for someone new.

He included six senators, six current and former governors, two mayors, one House member, plus four business executives, including Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Of the best known three, its unclear which, if any, will run, though Sanders may be best in position to influence the race with the large organization he is building.

The more interesting names were on Cillizzas list of eight with potential to be a major contender.

They included two senators already making quiet 2020 moves, New Jerseys Cory Booker and Californias Kamala Harris; two governors showing definite signs of interest, New Yorks Andrew Cuomo and Virginias Terry McAuliffe; 2016 vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine; little-known Washington Gov. Jay Inslee; and, perhaps most interestingly, comedian-turned-Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy.

Of those, Booker seems the likeliest to run, McAuliffe and Murphy perhaps the most promising. Kaine lacks a political base, and Cuomo and Harris might be ill-suited for the retail politics of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Frankens Minnesota colleague, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who recently headlined an Iowa Democratic fundraiser, was in a secondary group rated as having a chance. It also included former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley, who never stopped running after flopping in 2016; and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. Lastly were the rich business people like Cuban, Zuckerman and Sheryl Sandberg.

If I were betting, Id take the field against Biden, Sanders and Warren. And Id watch carefully for early responses in Iowa or New Hampshire to any of these lesser-known figures or perhaps someone else as yet unmentioned. Sanders May 2015 Iowa crowds were the first sign he might become a major 2016 player.

Despite the Trump experience, early efforts have been a tipoff ever since John F. Kennedy decided to seek the White House right after narrowly losing the vice presidential nomination at the 1956 Democratic Convention.

Another valuable sign: look for the non-Trump. Voters tend to pick someone clearly different from the incumbent. For the Democrats, that means someone younger with governmental experience and less of an alpha male.

Like most out of power parties, the Democrats are leaderless now. That ultimately will change. And it wont stop pundits and pollsters from producing multiple analyses of which one might emerge.

But the meaningful ones may only be evident in retrospect.

Originally posted here:
Carl Leubsdorf: Democrats already looking to 2020 - Omaha World-Herald

A couple of politically tone-deaf GOP congressmen, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), have introduced the State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, a proposal aimed at allowing individual states to set up their own guest-worker programs. My concept of border security includes a robust guest-worker program, Johnson declared. Its going to be a whole lot easier to secure the border when youre not having to clamp down on people coming here to seek the opportunities that America provides.

While the federal government would still control the issuance of visas, states would be granted the discretion to admit guest workers for as long as three years, after which their visas could be renewed.

Johnsons proposal allows each state to issue visas to as many as 5,000 workers, and draw from additional pool of 250,000 visas based on the states population relative to its percentage of the nations total population. The House version reduces those numbers to 2,500 and 125,000, respectively.

In addition, states could increase their caps by 10% in any year where 97% of their sponsored guest workers comply with their visa requirements and stay out of the black market. Any year a state missed that target would engender a 50% cap reduction. A state missing its target for four years would be suspended from the program for five years.

To make the proposal more palatable, participating workers would be barred from accessing welfare state benefits, such as ObamaCare or the Earned Income Tax Credit, and granting citizenship or permanent resident status to these workers would be prohibited. Workers would be able to change jobs, ostensibly as protection against possible abuse, but would be required to seek other employment only in the state that issued the visa, unless states formed compacts allowing workers multi-state employment access. Violators would lose their status and be subject to deportation.

Unsurprisingly, champions of comprehensive immigration reform are extolling the proposals virtues. Columnist Shikha Dalmia hails the great upside of an approach that would sidestep the messy politics in Washington that have long made sensible immigration reform well nigh impossible. The libertarian Cato Institutes David Bier applauds an approach in accordance with Americas long tradition of federalism in almost every other policy area, one that has the potential to increase support for immigration across the country, allowing America to set aside harmful protectionism and move closer to an economically competitive system.

At what price? We begin with the American Lefts dream of unassailable power, underscored by the reality that the 500,000 guest workers who could enter the country on renewable three-year visas per year would be allowed to bring with them their spouses and children who would not be counted as part of the cap. Under Johnsons proposal, this would allow more than a million people to enter the country annually a country in which more than half of illegal aliens overstayed their visas rather than crossed the border.

Enter birthright citizenship. As the law stands now, the hypothetical American-born child of state-based guest workers would be granted immediate U.S. citizenship and access to federal benefits, National Reviews Fred Bauer explains. At the age of 21, a U.S. citizen can sponsor his or her parents to become permanent residents and, eventually, citizens.

As the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes, those citizens would overwhelmingly support Democrats. The enormous flow of legal immigrants into the country 29.5 million from 1980 to 2012 has remade and continues to remake the nations electorate in favor of the Democratic Party, a 2015 CIS report stated. A follow-up study by the University of Marylands James G. Gimpel confirmed that assessment, revealing, Each one percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of a large countys population reduces the Republican share of the two-party vote by nearly 0.6 percentage points, on average.

Add incrementalism to the mix. As Bauer warns, it wouldnt be long before Democrats would demand that guest workers and their families have access to at least some federal benefits, health care likely chief among them, even as they would smear Republicans as cold-hearted and anti-immigrant for resisting.

Bauer further notes the horrendous optics ripe for leftist exploitation, including tenements swollen with guest workers and their beleaguered families and tearful U.S. citizens waving goodbye to their guest-worker parents, who have to leave the country because theyve lost their jobs. He also worries about the diminishment of civic health attached to a large class of residents who are viewed purely as economic resources with no stake in American society.

If that sounds familiar, its because America abided a similar arrangement once before it was called slavery.

Hot Air columnist Jazz Shaw focuses on security, warning that though the H-1B visa program is exploited by large companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign counterparts, its also one of the only ways to find out if someone is no longer complying with the rules or is in an overstay situation. This proposal would engender a red carpet invitation to abuse the visa system and disappear into the crowd.

Regardless, Johnson remains wedded to the prevailing and demonstrably false assertions driving ideas like this. We have a shortage of workers in all different areas of the economy, he insists. We need to recognize that a one-size-fits-all federal model for visas or guest workers doesnt work.

No, we need to recognize that, as is so often the case, government is determined to fix a problem on the wrong end. If there is a shortage of high-skill American workers in certain fields, it makes far more sense to reform a failing educational system that churns out Americans ill-equipped to compete in the 21st century economy.

As for the jobs Americans refuse to do, the notion that government would simultaneously underwrite millions of able-bodied dependents who refuse to work (or believe that certain work is beneath them) and the additional economic costs that attend themselves to accommodating millions of guest workers and their families is utterly absurd.

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revealed 17% of the American labor force is foreign born. For the 25 million workers added to that work force between 1996 and 2016, the percentage rises to nearly 50%.

What percentage of foreign workers constitutes critical mass? One that adversely affects not only the economic future of millions of Americans but the nations societal and cultural ethos as well?

I had thought that the current agenda for any sort of immigration reform was pretty clear following the last election cycle, Shaw writes. There would be no discussions of amnesty or any other priorities of liberals and open borders advocates until the border was secure and progress was being made on getting at least the worst offending criminal illegal aliens out of the country. Apparently I was mistaken.

Once again, the publics foremost immigration concerns, as in national security and the Rule of Law, are being ignored by Republicans still pushing comprehensive immigration reform by any subterfuge necessary.

They would like to pretend the 2016 election never happened. But it did. And they ignore its mandate at their own peril.

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Government & Politics Comprehensive Immigration Reform Subterfuge - Patriot Post

NEW ORLEANS The phrase But her emails! has become a sarcastic rallying cryamong many liberals who bemoan the attention dedicated last year to questions over Hillary Clintons use of a private email server.

Their perception that the focus on Clintons emails overshadowed the rest of her campaign is backed by data, according to an analysis recently released by researchers at Gallup, Georgetown University, and the University of Michigan. The results dont directly address the share of media coverage focused on Clintons emails, or the degree to which it hurt her standing, but they make it clear that much of what the public remembered hearing about her was focused on the controversy.

Email-related scandals clearly dominated recalled words about Clinton. This is true for almost every week of the campaign, the authors concluded in a presentation given Saturday during a panel on election surveys. There was no similarly common theme for Trump, whose multiple scandals produced a changing, and perhaps more easily overcome, narrative during the campaign.

During last years election, the polling firm Gallup regularly asked Americans if theyd read, heard, or seen anything about the presidential candidates in the last few days. Those who had usually two-thirds or more of the public in any given week were asked to elaborate.

The researchers then pulled out the words used by the public to describe what they were hearing about both candidates, as part of an effort to figure out what information was reaching voters and staying with them.

In a chart of the most common words used in relation to Clinton between last summer and Election Day, the word email quite literally crowds out the rest, with several of the other most prevalent words also alluding to perceptions that she was scandal-plagued. Health, another relatively common word, likely refers to the coverage of Clintons collapse at a 9/11 memorial event, which was caught on camera. Her campaign later released a statement saying she had pneumonia.

Frank Newport Lisa Singh Stuart Soroka Michael Traugott and Andrew Dugan

Clintons performance in the presidential debates also attracted attention, as did some of her speeches. But words that reflect her campaigns messaging or policy positions appear relatively scarce, suggesting her platform wasnt at the top of most Americans minds.

Because [what Americans recalled] was primarily about the emails, it didnt leave, relatively speaking, very much room for the issues,Michael Traugott, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said Saturday.

That held true for virtually the length of the general election. With the exception of the presidential debates and her bout with pneumonia, email was among the most cited words for Clinton in every week leading up to the election.

Frank Newport Lisa Singh Stuart Soroka Michael Traugott and Andrew Dugan

Many of the words surrounding Donald Trump also related to unflattering stories women, for example, which likely encompasses everything from his litany of demeaning comments about womento the accusations he faced late in the campaign of sexual harassment and assault. But no one topic completely dominated the publics impressions of him or his campaign.

Frank Newport Lisa Singh Stuart Soroka Michael Traugott and Andrew Dugan

The predominant conversations about Trump fluctuated throughout the campaign, encompassing his choice of Mike Pence as a running mate and his comments on immigration. Toward the end of the campaign, attention seemed to shift largely to his treatment of women.

Frank Newport Lisa Singh Stuart Soroka Michael Traugott and Andrew Dugan

Most of the words used to describe Trump werent exactly policy-focused either. But more so than Clinton, Trump apparently managed to focus public attention on at least some of his campaign rhetoric, specifically on immigration. That squareswith a pre-election HuffPost/YouGov survey, which found that Americans perceived Trumps campaign as focused on immigration, and Clintons campaign as being largely about the personal qualities of both candidates.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Republicans and Democrats consumed and remembered starkly different information about the candidates, according to the Gallup data.

Frank Newport Lisa Singh Stuart Soroka Michael Traugott and Andrew Dugan

While Democrats were paying attention to Trumps comments about women and marginalized groups, Republicans focused more on his attitudes toward immigration and his pledges to make America great again.

If the prominence of the word speech is any indication, much of what they heard about Trump came directly from the candidate himself. Cable television networks like Fox, CNN and MSNBC regularly aired Trumps campaign speeches in their entirety during last years election in one case, as The New York Times Michael Grynbaum noted, skipping Clintons speech to a workers union in order to broadcast a live feed of an empty podium in North Dakota, on a stage where Mr. Trump was about to speak.

Most of the attention to Clintons emails came from Republicans, who perceived her more generally as dishonest and scandal-plagued. Democrats impressions of Clinton, while not centered around any particular topic, were far more neutral, and included interest in topics like her economic proposals.

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Here's Just How Much Hillary Clinton's Emails Dominated The Campaign - HuffPost