Progressive outcry increases against “shocking betrayal” by 12 Senate Democrats backing GOP bill to attack President Obama’s landmark Dodd-Frank Act
Washington, D.C. – With indications that Sen. Crapo’s legislation to roll back Dodd-Frank reforms could move to the Senate floor as early as next month, Rootstrikers has launched a campaign branding the 12 Democratic cosponsors of the bill as the party’s #BailoutCaucus.
The campaign is calling on these 12 members of the Democratic caucus to drop their support of the bill, S.2155, and for Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to insist on an open process with votes on amendments that can reduce the harm of the legislation.
The following statement can be attributed to Kurt Walters, campaign director of Wall Street accountability and anti-corruption group Rootstrikers:
“The fact that 12 Senate Democrats are teaming up with Trump and the GOP to dismantle President Obama’s landmark Dodd-Frank Act is a shocking betrayal of the constituents who put them into office.
“This breakaway #BailoutCaucus may think their support of this bill will fly under the radar – only noticed by bank executives and lobbyists giving campaign contributions. They are wrong.
“We will make it clear to constituents that these 12 senators are failing the surging resistance movement by attacking President Obama’s legacy-defining legislation.
“Chuck Schumer has spent the past year making the case that Democrats are the party willing to stand up to corporate power to make a “better deal” for ordinary Americans. Democrats helping the GOP deliver a laundry list of bank lobbyist demands blows a gaping hole in the credibility of that message."
s. 2155 would, notably, deregulate banks that took $47 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money during the 2008 economic crisis, and increase systemic risk in the economy that could trigger future bailouts. Its direct beneficiaries include big names like BB&T, American Express, and SunTrust.
Rootstrikers launched the #BailoutCaucus campaign this week by calling out the 12 Democratic members of the #BailoutCaucus with an image that went viral on Facebook, shared at least 4,000 times and viewed by nearly 400,000 people on the platform.
In December, Rootstrikers and other advocacy groups including Public Citizen, CREDO Action, Daily Kos, and the Economic Policy Institute drove in hundreds of thousands of petition signatures and 3,000 phone calls to the Senate urging opposition to S.2155.
Rootstrikers is a project of Demand Progress, an organization of more than 2.5 million activists. A link to the petition Rootstrikers is promoting to its members is here:
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/sign-democrats-must-resist-trumps-attack-dodd-frank/
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Rootstrikers is a new generation of activists taking a stand against the corrupting influence of money in politics and Wall Street’s attempts to rig the game against everyday Americans. We are a project of Demand Progress.
