Weighty items on lawmakers' agenda
Health care isn't the only item lawmakers have to tackle. Tamara Keith reports that Congress' to-do list also includes climate legislation and reforming the financial regulatory system.
Capitol Hill (Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)
More on Politics
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Health care does seem to have sucked all the air out of Washington the past couple of months. But as Marketplace's Tamara Keith reports, there are still some weighty items still left undone.
TAMARA KEITH: If you're interested in anything else besides health care, just keep telling yourself the following.
STEVE COCHRAN: I actually do think that the Congress is capable of doing more than one thing.
ERIC HALPERIN: Congress has the ability to do two or more things at once.
Those were advocates Steve Cochran at the Environmental Defense Fund and Eric Halperin at the Center for Responsible Lending.
Both hope Congress will find time for their issues: energy legislation and financial reform. Steve Cochran is still sunny on cutting carbon emissions.
COCHRAN: I think the public actually believes this is a good thing to do.
And Eric Halperin says there's bipartisan support for financial reform.
HALPERIN: So I think there's that sense of urgency that we need this in place in order to move forward with the economy.
But Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says it's all too ambitious.
BRUCE JOSTEN: By trying to do so much so fast, the public is being lost.
Josten says it's risky to try to pass all this legislation at once.
JOSTEN: What in fact we're talking about here are transformative pieces of legislation.
Whether any of it lands on the president's desk depends on health care, says Norm Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute.
NORM ORNSTEIN: It's a little bit like a baseball player who gets on a hot streak. You hit a few balls really well, and all of a sudden you believe you can hit them all. And so what happens over the next few weeks will have a lot to do with whether we get a hot streak or a slump.
In Washington, I'm Tamara Keith for Marketplace.
Comments
Comment | Refresh
09/15/2009
The Center for Responsible Lending is not an honest broker in this, they are a surrogate corporate lobby and therefore tainted source on financial reform. They were founded by World Savings and are affiliated with the Self Help Credit Union, which runs the highest credit default rates of any credit union. They are part of the problem, yet Ms. Keith sources them as agents of the solution.
Post a Comment: Please be civil, brief and relevant.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments are moderated. Marketplace reserves the right to edit any comments on this site and to read them on the air if they are extra-interesting. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting.
You must be 13 or over to submit information to American Public Media. The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party. For more information see Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.