A package of Wall Street reforms was agreed to on Friday by congressional negotiators. “It is modest. It doesn’t go far enough,” Senator Bernie Sanders said. The legislation hammered out by a conference committee doesn’t break up huge banks. It doesn’t cap credit card interest rates. It does, however, include a Senate-passed provision by Sanders to end the secrecy that has shrouded the powerful Federal Reserve.  On the Senate floor, a weeks-old Republican filibuster blocked a bill to extend help for the long-term unemployed. Sanders, meanwhile, introduced a bill to end tax breaks for billionaires and their heirs.

Wall Street Reform The reforms agreed to in the financial reform bill would rein in some of the most outrageous Wall Street abuses that caused the worst recession since the 1930s. After an all-night meeting of a House and Senate conference committee, the package would create an agency to protect consumers in the financial marketplace and tighten regulations on risk-taking by large banks. Unfortunately, the bill does not break up too-big-to-fail banks that nearly drove the entire economy off of a cliff two years ago.  Incredibly, three out of the four largest financial institutions in this country (Bank of America JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo) are bigger today than they were before the financial crisis. It also does not place a cap, as Sanders wanted, on credit card interest rates.

The Fed A Sanders provision to lift the veil of secrecy at the Federal Reserve was included in the conference committee bill, which now goes back to the House and Senate for final votes.  The Fed by December 1 would have to divulge the names of financial institutions, corporations, and foreign central banks that received more than $2 trillion in secret loans and other financial assistance from the Fed.  Moreover, a top-to-bottom audit of all of the Federal Reserve’s emergency actions would be performed by the Government Accountability Office.  The GAO would investigate whether there were any conflicts of interest involving these secretive actions by the Fed. 

Unemployment Senate Republicans on Thursday once again blocked legislation to reinstate long-term unemployment benefits for people who have exhausted their aid, prolonging a stalemate that has left more than a million people without federal help. “In America, we don’t turn our backs on our neighbors,” Sanders said. In arguing for the extension, Sanders cited the case of a Burlington, Vt., woman who was one of 200 people to apply for a job at Fletcher Allen Hospital. To watch the speech, click here.

No More Tax Breaks for Billionaires Sanders on Thursday introduced legislation to restore the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans.  The proposal would bring in at least $264 billion over a decade to help lower the national debt. This legislation would ensure that the wealthiest Americans in our country, millionaires and billionaires, pay their fair share while exempting 99.7 percent of Americans from paying any estate tax whatsoever,” Sanders said. Lee Farris of United for a Fair Economy said Sanders’ bill “balances the desire to protect small businesses and farms, while ensuring that the super-wealthy give back to support the country that made their prosperity possible.”  To listen to an interview about the bill with radio host Ian Masters, click here.

A ‘Good Republican Idea’ You’ve got to go back 100 years, but Sanders told the Brattleboro Reformer the estate tax was first introduced a century ago by President Theodore Roosevelt. "This is a good Republican idea," he said. In the speech on August 31, 2010, Roosevelt said: “The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power… Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes…increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.” To read the Reformer article, click here.

Gulf Spill Sanders argued that legislation responding to the Gulf oil disaster should move the US away from fossil fuels toward safer, cleaner energy sources. "I am concerned that the current legislative proposals…are by no means strong enough," he said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Meanwhile, Transocean, which owns and operated the Deepwater Horizon rig that BP leased, was asked to cancel a $1 billion dividend next month. In a separate letter, Sanders and 17 Democratic senators said Transocean has refused to accept any financial responsibility for the oil spill in the Gulf. 

Afghanistan Congress backed President Obama's decision to appoint Gen. David Petraeus to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal after McChrystal and his staff in Afghanistan disparaged Obama’s national security team. “Obama did the right thing. He fired him,” Sanders said. Gen. McChrystal stepped over the bounds of what is acceptable in a military officer.