No one likes taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts, not even Tea Partiers.

However, if you look at changes proposed to the Dodd-Frank law in the current House Republican budget proposal, it sets Wall Street up for another huge taxpayer-funded bailout.

That is, this budget specifically makes Wall Street banks eligible for taxpayer-funded bailouts if they lose billions on derivatives bets that they know to be extremely high risk.



Dodd-Frank, which was written after George W. Bush used hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to bail out Wall Street banks, said that if the big banks wanted to continue with the crazy derivatives investment (which are basically large-scale, high-risk/high-reward legalized gambling) that it would have to do so without a guarantee of a federal insurance bailout should things go bad again.

The Republican budget, written by Citibank lobbyists, gets rid of this rule - allowing Wall Street banks to make high-risk bets again with the promise of a bailout if things go bad.

If you want to kill the Republican proposal, talking about environment regulations and nutritional standards will get our base interested, but not really change the way people understand what's happening in Washington.



But if you want to encapsulate the Republican brand - and set Dems up as the defenders of the middle class- than we need to label this clear and simple for what it is: A BAILOUT BUDGET for Wall Street banks.



In fact, most of the other odious provisions in this budget could be categorized as bailouts. The provision allowing energy companies to make risky derivative bets without collateral is a bailout for energy companies that already have record profits. The provision to guy regulations to prevent emissions and reduce EPA enforcement is simply a bailout for polluters (which not only costs us money, but health). The provision to weaken safety protections for truckers and other motorists is a bailout for the trucking industry. There's even a taxpayer-funded bailout provision for potato farmers that allows a transfer of tax dollars to the potato industry.

Basically, if you want to capture the attention and interest of the public, you have to define the difference between the parties in simple terms that show them who the Republicans are, what they stand for, and what this budget means for them.

Pure and simple, this is a Republican bailout budget. And it's unacceptable.