senate s rule-making power. could they pass a rule that requires 99 votes to pass legislation? what about 67? now we re at 60 votes. it used to be the filibuster was the exception to the rule. it s now become the rule itself. it s been used to lead to this cynicism about government. notice it s used most by the party that most wants government frankly not to work. and that goes to the points that you guys are making in court. i m going to use a television term, which is we re going to go to cloture and cut off debate for this segment. a filibuster joke, steven. i got you. you got it? just something we could do together. steven from common cause, thank you so much for joining us today. up next, an issue that even grover norquist and toure could agree on. i m serious. stay tuned. [ male announcer ] they say he was born to help people clean.
country. the presidency is something we have lived with probably since franklin dell another roosevelt. with every president since democrat or republican the president has accumulated more power. everybody used it in their own way extended their powers beyond the founding fathers. this is no different. he who has the power makes the rules. that s why you have rules and legislative body. take the rule making power away from the individuals it is a major mistake. i am sorry but look at the two mounts we have been talking about. we have been talking about the filibuster and executive power. these things were specifically limited in our constitution because the framers didn t know any one side they did not have power and authority over the process. but the spirit of the filibuster is to allow and do the job more slowly. there is no question the founders were concerned about experimental teaching: procedures for developing
rule-making power. in this bill he tries to take away the legislative oversight of medicare, and it s it s a pattern which he s pursued and which makes in my opinion a dictatorial approach. senator, i hear when you say that it s not your job right now to set your own priorities. clearly the unions have said, yes, we accede to the governor s request. they re making contributions in different ways that will help close the budget gap. but where would you have preferred to see the governor close his budget? i think it is certainly a fair question that folks say to you, come on, you ve got to have an alternate answer. how do you on the democratic side of the aisle say here s our counterproposal? you know, one of the proposals we had was not to give additional tax benefits to business. he s already cut some of the business taxes through credits, and he s increasing the deficit outrageously. actually, i think that taxation
we had this agency called the office of thrift supervision. they did really well. outdated thing. exactly. this agency does have rule making power. i want to point out this bill doesn t actually write as many rules as it tells other people to write rules. that s also a big concern to me because regulators haven t done a great job in the past so we re asking them to write 533 new rules to protect us. i don t know if they re going to do it. i think in the end when consumers have more information and it is concise and clearly articulated it is better. but in the at the end of the day, everybody here should know this bill is not going to do what you need to do for yourself educate yourself, protect yourself and ask a lot of questions. that leads to what i was asking about a glaring omission many say, which is reforming fannie and freddie. the government-backed mortgage giants that today have cost u.s. taxpayers $145 billion. all this screaming about the bailouts, that s $145
the way you limit that exposure is to say banks can t be over a certain size and they can t take more than a certain amount of risk. they went part of the way there, they just didn t finish the job. because of all that pressure that was coming in from all sides. 2,500 lobbyists against hundreds of lawmakers. guess who won? the reality is i don t think it does that. it does do some good things. this consumer financial protection bureau will oversee the mortgage market and the credit card industry, they will have some rule making power. for us in our real lifbz, that may be a good thing. but from the big picture i am disappointed. i want is to ask you about that because how much do we really know about how this bill will play out. 2,300 pages in this bill but in practice, are there loopholes, are they going to be used, and are there unintended consequences of the bill? there are about 100 zillion lawyers on wall street right now who are looking through this bill.