{"id":243701,"date":"2010-01-28T19:45:37","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T00:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=64114"},"modified":"2010-01-28T19:45:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T00:45:37","slug":"bernanke-approved-70-30-for-second-term-as-fed-chair-seven-senators-hope-to-hide-behind-flipped-cloture-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/243701","title":{"rendered":"Bernanke Approved 70-30 for Second Term as Fed Chair; Seven Senators Hope to Hide Behind Flipped Cloture Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_54146\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 310px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/talkradionews\/2674885830\/sizes\/m\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-54146\" title=\"BenBernanke_talkradionews-Flickr\" src=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/1\/files\/2009\/12\/BenBernanke_talkradionews-Flickr-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Now and future Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke (photo: talkradionews)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Now and future Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke (photo: talkradionews)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The US Senate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.senate.gov\/legislative\/LIS\/roll_call_lists\/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&#038;session=2&#038;vote=00016\">voted this afternoon<\/a> to re-up co-architect of our misfortune, Ben Bernanke. The final vote was 70-30\u2014but that is only part of the story. Seven senators\u2014six of them Democrats\u2014voted \u201caye\u201d on cloture, allowing the final vote to proceed, before voting \u201cnay\u201d on the Fed Chairman\u2019s final confirmation. While those seven votes wouldn\u2019t have been enough to sustain a filibuster, a little more courage on the part of the Majority, and a little more political savvy on the part of the White House, could have easily stopped Ben in his tracks.<\/p>\n<p>Bernanke\u2019s \u201cideas\u201d are all over the 2008 collapse of our economy\u2014and his uncaring hand on the rudder has helped steer us into this \u201cjobless recovery\u201d (a term I am embarrassed by every time I use it). The American people know it, some senators know it, and the Obama Administration is foolish to pretend that they don\u2019t know it.<\/p>\n<p>Foolish, too, are Senators Barbara Boxer, Al Franken, Tom Harkin, Ted Kaufman, Sheldon Whitehouse, Byron Dorgan, and George LeMieux\u2014all of who think that they can hide behind, and\/or campaign on, the \u201cI was against him after I was for him\u201d strategy.<\/p>\n<p>A spate of elections, most recently the special in Massachusetts, have shown that Americans are pissed off and scared. A vaguely rising Dow index matters little to the chronically unemployed or those forced from their homes by foreclosure. A move to replace Bernanke could have signaled to voters that those in power understood that and wanted to change course; this \u201checkuva job, Ben\u201d moment just telegraphs \u201cmore of the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following the Massachusetts vote with the Bernanke OK means \u201cmore of the same\u201d is likely what Democrats can expect in the coming midterms.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.firedoglake.com\/2010\/01\/28\/senate-voting-to-end-debate-on-ben-bernanke-nomination\/\" >Dave has the day\u2019s events, the vote totals, and much, much more over at the <em>News Desk<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=64114&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_64114\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now and future Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke (photo: talkradionews) The US Senate voted this afternoon to re-up co-architect of our misfortune, Ben Bernanke. The final vote was 70-30\u2014but that is only part of the story. Seven senators\u2014six of them Democrats\u2014voted \u201caye\u201d on cloture, allowing the final vote to proceed, before voting \u201cnay\u201d on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4839,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4839"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}