Oh, the joys of bipartisanship!

The media may talk about how Washington is too "polarized", but when it comes to the important stuff - giving the Pentagon more money than it asked for, and spying on the American public - Democrats and Republicans join hands in screwing the working class.

Dems and Repubs find they can work together when it comes to Wall Street as well.



But unlike the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, which passed along party lines, the effort to loosen the post-crisis rules is somewhat bipartisan. A group of Senate Democrats has joined Republicans to support legislation that would mark the first major revision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, a signature accomplishment of President Barack Obama that has been deemed “a disaster” by President Trump.

...The bill that is working its way through the Senate was brokered primarily by Senator Mike Crapo, the Idaho Republican who chairs the banking committee, and moderate Democrats such as Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. Eleven Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring the bill, making its passage in the Senate likely.

Doesn't all that joyous hand-holding give you a warm feeling inside?

It would be wrong to assume that this is just a few Democratic Senators. It'll all of Washington.



The rebound for the lenders has been so remarkable that Republicans and Democrats in Congress are pushing to scale back financial regulations imposed in the wake of the meltdown — one of the few areas where the two parties agree.

...His Treasury Department has drawn up a series of recommendations for trimming the post-crisis rule book. Even the Federal Reserve, the top banking regulator, is working to relax safeguards.

...“It's past time," said Tester, one of a number of Democrats up for reelection in red states next November. "It's too bad we didn't get this done four or five years ago. But everything has its moment in time.”

It's not a secret that the Trump Administration is full of Goldman Sachs bankers, but what is interesting is how many of them are also Democrats.



His national economic council director Gary Cohn is a Democrat, as is probably his closest advisor, Jared Kushner.

...Mnuchin prefers to lean on a very small, insular group of aides — Craig Phillips, Eli Miller, Justin Muzinich, Tony Sayegh, Drew Maloney and Brent McIntosh — which has generated frustration among career staff . . .

He’s opted to leave vacant a number of key positions — including undersecretary for domestic finance, one of the highest-ranked positions in the agency, and deputy Treasury secretary — while surrounding himself with former Wall Street executives, many of them Democrats.

That's not to say that there isn't some pushback against re-deregulating Wall Street. It's just that progressives like Senators Warren and Sanders are hopelessly outnumbered.

I'll end this essay with one last quote.



One of the best ways to help Trump win a second term would be for the Democratic Party to embrace Wall Street. That surely would convince enough working class voters in key states that the Democrats are totally in bed with financial elites, care little about the destruction of middle class jobs, and will continue to promote and profit by runaway inequality.