U.S. Senate
See Full Big Line
(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
See Full Big Line
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
See Full Big Line
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
See Full Big Line
(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
See Full Big Line
(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 08, 2010 08:52 PM UTC
54 Comments
Note that Udall also bent over for the banks.
personally I’m really disappointed in both our Senators regarding this.
Who is the Senior Senator of Colorado?
I have been puzzled by a number of Udall’s votes since Bennet was appointed.
He has broken with his own record on a lot of votes – and with his cousin Tom in NM – especially on environmental issues that Mo Udall would not have approved.
My conspiracy theory is that these votes are all in order to give Senator Bennet cover for his bad voting as a conservadem.
thankfully Udall at least voted for Cramdown.
I have been very surprised by “Boulder Liberal Mark Udall’s” votes as a Senator. Incredibly conservative. I don’t know if I believe the conspiracy theory, but it is an interesting theory.
You mean you believed Dick Wadhams two years ago, not the Udall camp, which ran a centrist, moderate campaign? If Udall hasn’t lived up to your expectations, perhaps it’s because you let his opponents set those expectations, instead of listening to the candidate himself.
Udall ran a very moderate campaign. I just remember those commercials and how hysterical they were. I have said it for years, you run a moderate in a moderate state, you can’t be mad when they vote moderately.
Maybe “surprised” was the wrong word, I should have used, “saddened.”
After the vote on Friday, I called Bennet’s office to register my disappointment (but not surprise) with his vote. I also let them know that it caused me to change my mind about who I will be voting for in August. I now plan to vote for Andrew Romanoff. I encourage those who read this to do the same.
That hurt my ears.
Sen. Bennet’s vote on the “too big to fail” was entirely in line with expectations given his accumulated war chest of donations from the financial industry.
It’s then a hollow claim when his campaign manager touts his ability to
[Craig Hughes, e-mail message 05/08/10]
With Bennet, it’ll be status quo, only more so.
Or welcome back.
But seriously? Calling out the voting record amendments is what you do when you don’t have ANYTHING else to say.
An innocent baby fresh from a clean diaper would see through that load of horse pucky.
Not saying I’m happy with how Bennet is voting, but gimme a break!
Romanoff, try something real or just put that rake BACK IN THE CLOSET
It shows the track record of a Senator that has a certain voting trend.
Another twist to this is that one of the banks not too big to fail, in his estimation, is one of the beneficiaries of the DPS interest-rate swaps. JP Morgan was not only the other side of the swap deal, they were also the only financial advisors provided to the Board of Education, even though they gain from fees on the deal. This was a huge conflict of interest.
It’s really important to see this one vote in context with the rest. I would also throw the cramdown vote into the mix.
that using all caps on the subject line was considered bad form. Just saying.
IF THE POINT YOU’RE MAKING IS REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT?
I’m not sure that breaking up CITI or BOA would help the economy.
I don’t see where anti-trust law has been violated.
Bennet supports changing the regulation of securities which is the main issue.
Any vote Sen Bennet takes, the Romanoff people will attack. They don’t bother reading the bills. They depend on innuendo and rush to judgment. They play to the voters anger, as they are angry themselves.
They will not have a hero in Andrew Romanoff.
Sen Bennet doesn’t lie about why he votes.
The problem, Romanoff folks, is that Andrew Romanoff consciously and consistently pitched himself as a “new Democrat” in league with DLC centrists. So I think Romanoff is full of crap when he declares he’s Mr. Progressive now. Case in point: he spent the whole heatth care debate saying he’s Mr. Single Payer — but that’s not what he was saying less than two years ago, when he was “DLC New Dem of the Week.” Then, he proposed the following unimpressive, Ben Nelson-like centrist health care proposals:
“… to work to cut the cost of health care, reduce the ranks of the uninsured, put a premium on preventative care, and help provide healthy surroundings. Specifically, he proposed ensuring that all children have health coverage. In addition, Romanoff wants to offer standardized ID cards and claim forms in order to streamline the process to verify eligible and credible providers and simplify procedures for authorization and appeal.”
So given his consistently DLC, centrist record for years, why on earth should we believe his primary-election conversion into Mr. Progressive?
your point about Bennets’ vote is…?
I view that as the government places limits on companies for the safety of the state. One of those limits is anti-trust. Another is regulation. This would have been a limit placed for the pure & simple reason that having TBTF threatens the entire economy.
My understanding of the financial sector is that they need diversity to minimize risk. Brown Kaufman seems to require a narrowed focus- and smaller scope- that actually increase risk, at least short term for at least 4 of the big 6.
The Bill already gives regulators more stick, and takes away enough of the carrot to be real reform- no deriviatives dealing, no hedge funds, no betting against the house, bigger reserve requirements,
It doesn’t do everything – but it does a lot and it’s a good bill even without the Brown Kaufman amendment, which by the way missed by a could of dozen votes. I guess Udall could be providing cover for Bennet saddening Oz and Stryker. But how do you explain the other 27 D senators voting no? Maybe they are all covering for Bennnet. Or something.
At present the very large banks, and their investors, assume the feds will step in if the screw up again. Because we have to. But if they are kept under a certain size, then we just have the FDIC handle it.
I also have yet to hear of a reason that we need banks to be this large. Mid-size banks do quite fine providing everything we all need from a bank.
the argument for BIG goes like this:
CEO to Board and shareholders: if we get a little bigger, we can a little more profitable. (and I can get paid more) If we get a lot bigger, we can get a lot more profitable.
There is no advantage to the consumer for mega banks.
I agree we should get rid of TBTF. I’m not sure Brown Kauffman was a good way to do that. I’m also not sure we can do it solo. This is an area where it would seem we need some intnat’l cooperation – ie, what would stopr Royal Bank of Canada getting TBTF? Or Barclay’s? Or BNP Paribas? etc
A destabilizing bank that’s too big doesn’t have to be domestic.
then breaking up TBTF isn’t really the way to go about it because risk becomes systemic and instead of having a few huge banks to bail out we’d have hundreds of smaller, regional banks failing. The FDIC obviously does not have the funds to cover every bank failure, so the taxpayers would end up footing the bill again to pay back these hundreds of banks or watch as our financial system shrivels up when the FDIC takes them over to shut them down. If you want to contain the need for bail outs, institute rules on leverage and create a fund that banks pay into themselves to pay for their own bailout. That both discourages the banking activity that creates the needs for bail outs and the moral hazard associated with TBTF now.
The reason we need banks this large is because if you’re looking for an overnight loan for a billion dollars, there’s not really any other place you can go. Without becoming hugely leveraged, there’s no way for banks to meet the needs of large businesses in the U.S. without being very large themselves.
The system worked well this way for over 50 years until the Reagan revolution and the new conservative DLC came along to wipe out the protections enacted under Roosevelt.
Even in the massive S&L crisis, it didn’t reach the level of systemic risk, and we taxpayers were still on the hook to bail them out! $300 billion I think was the final tab there!
New Deal regulations limited leverage and lending, exactly what I said regulation should be dealing with. Additionally the rise of even larger corporations in the face of global competition has made large banks more important than ever in the past, which is why breaking up TBTF isn’t a good idea now — particularly in the face of other regulations (like those from the New Deal) that we know work.
regardless of their size. The risks they pose to the economy however are directly correlated to their size. We don’t need big banks for any economic reasons. big banks exist only for their own reasons, and those of their boards and executives (power, profit, etc).
we probably agree on more than we disagree. We just disagree on the best approach to solve your signature issue.
🙂
you can just assert that the business will be done regardless of size, but I could just assert the opposite there’s no way to arbitrate between these competing claims. Hooray, neither of us has proved anything, but go talk to someone who works in finance for a Fortune 500 company and then tell me if 1stBank would be able to handle all of their needs.
Also, you should provide some evidence or logical warrant for your assertion that “the risks they pose to the economy however are directly correlated to their size.” One of our worst banking crises ever was the one that started the recession of 1876 and none of the banks there were nearly as big as Citibank, JPMorgan, etc..
In Europe, smaller regional banks like we have in the U.S. are unheard of, in those countries you have about 5 mammoth banks and that’s it — big banks exist for historical, legal, geographic, and commerce-related reasons. Don’t try and pin it all on “power and profit” without being able back it up somehow. It always feels great to scapegoat and degrade those who have more power and money in society than we do but it doesn’t mean that it’s intellectually honest to do so.
where have you been for the last two years? If you think there is no correlation to systemic risk and bank size, you must have been living under a rock.
And you have to go back to the 1870’s to prove your point? What else do you find relevant about that era and today’s age? The horse and buggy maybe? And there were many other issues going on then that were much more relevant than bank size (currency manipulations, the Robber Barons, etc).
Regulation and the separation of our financial institutions (ala Glass-Steagall) has been the foundation of our extraordinary financial stability and economic success for decades. Removing these regulatory barriers has opened our system up to the very risks you mention from ages of yore.
What do they have to do with anything?
Clinton (and his DLC cronies) continued the unraveling of the regulatory regime which had been so effective over many decades in keeping this country safe from economic disaster.
That’s a softball if ever I saw one.
Who cares about the DLC anymore?
who keeps using the DLC as a stone to throw at Romanoff…
ConservaDems, whether DLC or any other stripe, are just Republican-lite. That’s why they are always so willing to go along with whatever trash the R’s throw out there.
I don’t like much about the politics of the right, but I have to give them the credit of at least being able to stand up for what they believe. I think many on my side cave in to the other side far too easily. We seem so worried about being nice, or playing fair. Those are not issues the other side seems to concern themselves with.
Then again, maybe it’s just that many on the D side really are more closely aligned on many issues with the R’s. Blue Dogs and all.
Yeah- I get your frustration with the DLC and with D’s who don’t do what you would prefer.
What’s any of that got to do with Romanoff?
the other 27 D’s also get enormous campaign funds from Wall Street. I don’t know, I’m just offering it as a possible reason.
Also, you are conflating systemic risk with individual bank risk. We can increase one (individual bank risk) while drastically reducing the other (system risk) and we should absolutely do it.
If individual banks fail, so be it. As long as they also don’t hold the gun to our heads of taking down the entire financial system when they go under.
“institutional” and systemic are essentially synonymous.
because the institutions are capable of bringing the system down with them. No argument there.
What was your point again?
risk minimization suggests diversification
diversification suggests size
just capping Citi’s size induces more risk right now, not less.
And even an orderly winding down plan would sem to drive the size out of the US. What’s the rule in Canada for size and diversity? UK? China? Australia?
how does “just capping Citi’s size” induce more risk now? And by what means do you suggest capping their size?
Experience suggests there is a good process of unwinding the assets of TBTF banks using market mechanisms. Better that than liquidation once one of them does in fact fail and we don’t rescue them the next time because there will be no political will for this the next time.
There was very ittle political will the last time.
But Bush did it anyway.
ANd so will whomever is in the job the next time.
you think so? What Bush did was cave to his core political-financial principle of non-interference in the capital markets. As soon a the shit hit the fan, her reverted to Keynsian-Roosevelt interventionism.
But apparently you don’t hear the backlash created by these big bank bail-outs. You think it a tempest in a tea-pot maybe. But there is a huge undercurrent of resentment to fat-cats on Wall Street getting bailed out while millions of Americans on Main Street lose their homes and their life savings. If you think this will be easy to do the next time, and there will be a next time, I think you should quit bogarding whatever it is you’re smoking then.
Bush was willing.
And Paulson.
And Greenspan.
Not because it’s what that they wanted to do or what they wanted to have happen. But when they looked at the numbers and ran the calculations, the only question that mattered at that point was do we crater the global economy for the foreseeable future or do we save these idiots from themselves and by so doing save the economic organization we have now, more or less?.
We know how they answered. I propose that it was non-partisan, and unpolitical and whom ever is there next will do it again.
I never said it was easy to do. I get how unpopular it is.
But the only reason there is “backlash” and resentment now instead of real, informed, constant call for reform is because most people do not understand how US banks and the global banking system works or is structured.*
We all hate bank bailouts – and TBTF is easy to hate. I’m not sure what the best first steps are, but I’m sure trying to make all the changes all at once is not the safest path.
*Who runs the US central bank?
Is the the central bank “profitable”?
If not- why not?
If so – who gets that profit?
What stops an international bank from following the US rules in the US, and doing whatever they want in the ROTW?
Should the US taxpayers care that the US is a major international banking (and insurance) center? Why?
Should we impose capital restrictions on foreign investors and lenders (and financial players) ? What would be the likely impact?
Why did GM and Chrysler fail just because the financial sector was failing? (If you think it was just bad cars, or overpaid workers – guess again.)
Whether Romanoff would vote for the bill without this one amendment.
One amendment, huh? This bill was created in the Ag and Banking committees, which Bennet is on. I guess the argument is that he is corrupt even though dozens of his votes were to move this bill forward. And the other HALF of the Democratic caucus that voted against this must be corrupt too.
Good luck getting media coverage after the assemblies, AR camp.
but I wonder why you’re so defensive on this point. There seems to be this idea among Bennet supporters that absent any quid-pro-quo vote buying there is no real argument to be made that these massive donations otherwise influence the Senator’s or any other politician’s votes.
Most likely is that donations don’t buy the vote, they buy the candidate, meaning that donators only donate to the candidates they think will vote their way. Otherwise, why donate at all. It is more subtle than your broad-brush conclusions imply.
Swing and a miss!
Completely not the point.
Should we have serious campaign finance reform and regulation that gets the big moeny out- or at least regulates it in a way that allows and encourages fair and open elections? Absolutely.
Is the smart path to getting there that we just stop raising and spending? No.
A candidate has gotta win to legislate.
And to win you need media.
Media costs.
which is why so many states and so many people believe their elected repsresentatives are incapable of doing just that- representing. So they take the matter into their own hands via referenda and other processes which bypass the legislatures which they don’t think have their best interests at heart.
Thi sis why there has been such a big push for direct Democracy in our nation over the past 20-25 years. Because people believe ther elected represetantatives have others interests ahead of theirs. hence Ross Perot, and the Tea Party movement, et al.
when Romanoff took PAC money — and when Romanoff had his own PAC that took PAC money — that was, well, different, or something.
And when Romanoff can identify, well, a grand total of 2 (maybe now three) votes of Senator Bennet’s that he would, perhaps, have done differently, that shows, well, that the corrupting influence of money is just, well, so corrupting, at least for everyone but Andrew.
I’m not totally sold on, well, any of that.
Bennet is making a great show of saying the right things and writing nice letters to Reid about standing for the public options, reform with teeth, etc. But when push comes to shove, he folds like a wet paper towel.
Bennet is a career corporatist. He has deep ties to the financial industry, worked for a billionaire financier of the worst sort and receives enormous sums of money from his industry cohorts, so we shouldn’t be surprised when he sides with Wall Street against main Street.
is access. Elected officials are constantly bombarded with requests for an audience by all sorts of people. The staffers of the elected officials are under a great deal of pressure to accomodate these big donors.
When a steady stream of big donors are at the door, the voices of the little people don’t get much notice. When it comes to getting face time with your senator, often it is simply a matter of political “weight”. If you don’t have it, you have to …wait.
Brown-Kaufman was a bit arbitrary in its construction. I think some of the other pending amendments, including the re-implementation of Glass-Steagall and the Volcker Rule would accomplish much the same result without essentially picking a number out of thin air.
I’ll wait until the financial reform bill is done before deciding whether Udall and Bennet have done a good job, thanks. Please take your premature campaigning elsewhere (preferably somewhere that doesn’t mind your ALL-CAPS style…)