July 16, 2010 04:37 AM UTC

(Updated to reflect CPR change) Breaking: Romanoff Would Have Killed Wall Street Reform

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• by: catpuzzle

Update 2: Looks like the reporter misunderstood Romanoff’s effort to have it both ways by trashing the bill and attacking Bennet, without actually saying he would have voted for it. Glad Andrew now has decided to support the bill though. If he had said he supported it earlier, which he was trying to avoid saying, this all would have been moot.

we mistakenly reported that his democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff would have voted against the bill. Romanoff clarified his position today

Update: The Huffington Post has posted the radio report, and it says (and I heard)…

“Senator Bennet’s democratic primary challenger says the bill doesn’t do enough to fix Wall Street and he would have voted against it.”

Huffington Post writes…

Challenger Andrew Romanoff says he would have voted against the financial reform bill passed by the Senate this week because it doesn’t go far enough. Were Romanoff, the former Speaker of the Colorado State House, representing Colorado in the Senate, his ‘No’ vote would have made him one of just two Democrats to oppose the legislation, and would have prevented the bill’s passage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

ORIGINAL POST:

Wall Street reform finally crossed the finish line today, but if Andrew Romanoff were in the Senate, it would have died by one vote.

I was listening to Colorado Public Radio on the way home today. They reported (and I heard VERY clearly) that Romanoff said he would have voted against Wall Street reform. That means it never would have passed since it got only 60 votes. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall voted for it.

I think it’s pretty ironic, since in Romanoff’s new television ad he refers to Wall Street as a “rigged casino.”  But Romanoff obviously doesn’t want to fix the problem or even take steps forward to address the problems that led to our financial crisis.

According to the New York Times, this bill will help end the same reckless behavior that got us into this mess. Republicans held up the legislation for weeks, as they are now holding up extending unemployment benefits, etc, but in the end Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and the rest of the other Republicans lost. And Romanoff would have been their ally.

The bill expands federal banking and securities regulation from its focus on banks and public markets, subjecting a wider range of financial companies to government oversight, and imposing regulation for the first time on “black markets” like the enormous trade in credit derivatives.

It creates a council of federal regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to coordinate the detection of risks to the financial system, and it provides new powers to constrain and even dismantle troubled companies.

It also creates a powerful new regulator, appointed by the president, to protect consumers of financial products, which will be housed in the Federal Reserve. The first visible result may come in about two years, the deadline for the consumer regulator to create a simplified disclosure form for mortgage loans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07…

It may not be perfect, but it’s clear that it contains a lot of good stuff protecting consumers, regulating banks, etc.

We have passed two key pieces of reform this year: Health Care Reform and Wall Street reform. Romanoff has also said he would have killed Health Care Reform. Again, neither bill was perfect, but change is slow and I think both moved us miles up the road.