The Two Parties Cannot Even Talk to Each Other

Lets face it: bipartisanship has ended.

How else can you describe what is going in Washington today?

President Obama will speak with those who have opposing views, but only to define his arguments to be used against those making them.

And the Democrats will follow the lead of the White House.

Meanwhile, at an invitation only meeting in the Senate, we were briefed on the unlimited, blank-check-bailout provisions of the Dodd Financial Reform bill.

But all over the news is the White House and the Dems denying that there are any bailout provisions.

And the political implications are profound.

The Democrats will believe the White House propaganda.

But the bailouts are there, I checked.  Here is a larger excerpt about the bill by a law professor who published his analysis in the Wall Street Journal:

There is another lesson in the Lehman bankruptcy. Mr. Dodd claims his bill cures the too-big-to-fail problem because it requires the liquidation of a failing firm. But Lehman has been liquidated; what is left is a shell that may or may not struggle back to profitability.

The difference between the Lehman bankruptcy and what the Dodd bill proposes is important to understand. The Dodd bill provides for a $50 billion fund, collected in advance from large financial firms, that will be used for the resolution process. In other words, the creditors of any company that is resolved under the Dodd bill have a chance to be bailed out. That’s what these outside funds are for. But if the creditors are to take most of the losses—as they did in Lehman—a fund isn’t necessary.

Which system is more likely to eliminate the moral hazard of too big to fail? In a bankruptcy, as in the Lehman case, the creditors learned that when they lend to weak companies they have to be careful. The Dodd bill would teach the opposite lesson. As Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) wrote in a March 25 letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Dodd bill “reinforces the expectation that the government stands ready to intervene on behalf of large and politically connected financial institutions at the expense of Main Street firms and the American taxpayer. Therefore, the bill institutionalizes ‘too big to fail.'”

So, Republicans and Democrats cannot even agree on basic facts.

The Dems are wrong, but they will insist the bill is not a perpetual bailout bill, and will vote accordingly.

And their bailout votes will be unbelievably damaging to them — because the public will believe it is a bail out bill.

But the Dems are not listening and are in denial, so what is there to do but watch them self-destruct, a la ObamaCare?

And no amount of phone calls or polls are going to convince them otherwise.  The Dems are not going to listen and just don’t care.