It seems to me to be out of character for Representative Capuano or any Democrat, including President Clinton to support irresponsible legislation. To be sure, trying to unravel legislative language can give me a headache in about 2 minutes. But I am always willing to give it my best shot. This is what I found.
The bill that Capuano voted Yea to was
House Vote On Passage: H.R. 4541 [106th]: Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
he voted Yea along with the other Mass Representatives
Massachusetts
Yea MA-1 Olver, John [D]
Yea MA-2 Neal, Richard [D]
Yea MA-3 McGovern, James [D]
Yea MA-4 Frank, Barney [D]
Yea MA-5 Meehan, Martin [D]
Yea MA-6 Tierney, John [D]
Yea MA-7 Markey, Edward [D]
Yea MA-8 Capuano, Michael [D]
Yea MA-9 Moakley, John [D]
Yea MA-10 Delahunt, William [D]
Here is the summary, which is worth taking a look at.
This bill was received by the Senate on 10/19/2000. No further action was taken, and it never became law.
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Then, it reappeared in the following legislation.
H.R. 4577:
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001
It appears this bill was a compilation of many including:
— Benefits Improvement and Protection Act
— BIPA bill
— FY2001 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill
— Advisory Council on Community Renewal Act
— Assets for Independence Act Amendments of 2000
— Certified Development Company Program Improvements Act of 2000
— Children’s Internet Protect Act
— Colorado Ute Settlement Act Amendments of 2000
— Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
— Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000
— Congressional Operations Appropriations Act, 2001
— Dakota Water Resources Act of 2000
— Delta Regional Authority Act of 2000
— Department of Education Appropriations Act, 2001
— Department of Health and Human Services Appropriations Act, 2001
— Department of Labor Appropriations Act, 2001
— Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001
— Early Learning Opportunities Act
— Erie Canalway National Heritage Cooridor Act
— Executive Office Appropriatons Act, 2001
— HUBZones in Native America Act of 2000
— Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001
— Law Enforcement Pay Equity Act of 2000
— Legal Certainty for Bank Products Act of 200
Massachusetts Reps, including Capuano, voted unanimously against it…….
Massachusetts
Nay MA-1 Olver, John [D]
Nay MA-2 Neal, Richard [D]
Nay MA-3 McGovern, James [D]
Nay MA-4 Frank, Barney [D]
Nay MA-5 Meehan, Martin [D]
Nay MA-6 Tierney, John [D]
Nay MA-7 Markey, Edward [D]
Nay MA-8 Capuano, Michael [D]
Nay MA-9 Moakley, John [D]
Nay MA-10 Delahunt, William [D]
This is the bill that passed and was signed into law by President Clinton [wrong, not quite the final bill…see below]. I don’t know if it was the exact same bill included in this package or a modified version of it. Anyone have any insight? More than anything else, I want to know the truth. Let’s find the truth.
Update:
Bean in the Burbs brought forth this roll call. This does appear to be the final, final, final bill.
Dec 15, 2000: After passing both the Senate and House, a conference committee is created to work out differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill. A conference report resolving those differences passed in the House of Representatives, paving the way for enactment of the bill, by roll call vote. The totals were 292 Ayes, 60 Nays, 80 Present/Not Voting.
Massachusetts
Yea MA-1 Olver, John [D]
Yea MA-2 Neal, Richard [D]
Yea MA-3 McGovern, James [D]
Nay MA-4 Frank, Barney [D]
Yea MA-5 Meehan, Martin [D]
Yea MA-6 Tierney, John [D]
Yea MA-7 Markey, Edward [D]
Yea MA-8 Capuano, Michael [D]
Not Voting MA-9 Moakley, John [D]
Not Voting MA-10 Delahunt, William [D]
I wonder what the changes were that made all of the Nays turn to Yeas, except for Barney Frank. All the more curious.
…but first, for a lot of good background and history on the legislation, Wikipedia seems to do a good job. including the “Enron” loophole that raped Calf. electric rate payers. (This was the single worst vote Congress took since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in ’64.)
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p>But my research on the vote conflicts with yours. I don’t pretend to be a roll call research expert and I could very well have made an error. But my link is from the House Clerks site and your source is a 3rd party processor of the clerk’s data. Also, the roll call I found has the same tally–292 to 60–as the wiki article and a Dec 2000 date, which is when the vote occurred. The roll call for date from your site is June of 2000.
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p>Not only does my roll call appear more consistent…but Congressman Capuano admitted that he voted for this financial deregulation bill at the Merrimack College forum a few weeks ago. And as some who has Cap slotted as my 2nd choice behind Khazei, I was greatly disappointed with his answer, that went something like this…”I voted for a bill that talked about ‘futures’, nothing about derivatives or credit default swaps. Besides it was one bad vote compared to the 1000 great ones I’ve made.” Well…among other things, voting for futures and not derivatives is like knowing you’re pregnant, but not understanding you’re having a baby.
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p>There is plenty of video and audio from that day floating around that you can see/hear for yourself. Cap really lost a lot of value in my eyes with that answer.
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and thanks to Bean in the Burbs for pointing it out on another post. It is very difficult to try to follow a bill from beginning to end. What’s even more difficult is not knowing the reasoning behind votes, especially when it is a compiled bill, with many pieces of legislation that have been put together as one big compromise package.
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p>I am not a roll call research expert either. I’m just looking for the truth without media spin or biased analysis. I’m not going to fault an experienced candidate for a few misjudgements. Hillary Clinton voted for authorization for the Iraq War (one of Obama Campaign’s biggest talking points, and one reason she lost the liberals in such great numbers). You really do have to look at the whole picture. A candidates underlying character, vision, and beliefs.
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p>Wikipedia is good, but you can’t trust it completely. I go there for initial information, and then try to verify. Govtrack.us is a good research tool because it compiles everything together, including related bills. Of course, all information should be verified. The error in my post was mine, not Govtrack’s.
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p>In any case, the point of this post is to try to understand why so many Democrats voted for this bill, and why
President Clinton was OK with signing it into law. I’m still trying to find the answer to that question. I’ll try to look up Capuano’s statements at Merrimack College forum, thanks for sharing.
that went something like this
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p>Is it a quote or not? If it’s not then it is disingenuous for you to put these words into his mouth. I did a search earlier to get a transcript of his remarks the day you speak of. Can’t find anything. Will look later.
Putting quotes around a paraphrase is the correct approach, when it’s cast like that. How else do you indicate which words are part of the paraphrase, and which aren’t? the “something like this” makes it clear that it’s not an exact quote. It may be a completely inaccurate paraphrase, but putting quotes around it doesn’t make any claim otherwise.
putting it in quotation marks gives it more impact from a readers perspective. It creates the impression that it is a direct quote and can be carried forward as such, not only in someone’s head, but on someone’s keyboard. There are other ways to paraphrase, it just takes a little effort to write the sentence and create impact without using quotation marks where no direct quote exists. I would really like to see the direct quote and compare it to the paraphrase.
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p>This is true especially in a political campaign, where quotes fly around everywhere, and the impact of them can mean everything.
While I admit that I do not know the full impact of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. I wanted to also mention that Capuano voted against the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, better known as the Gramm-Leach-Bailey Act that was discussed at great length during the last presidential election.
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p>Plus if Bean is working for a campaign it should be noted.
unapologetically pro-Coakley, as she has made clear many times on many threads. I think she’s volunteering; she can correct me if I’m wrong.
is not helpful to Coakley.
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p>I don’t think attacking for the sake of attacking is helpful to anyone. Both Coakley and Capuano have done a great deal of service to our state and should be commended. If there is an actual issue then fine, if it’s mudslinging then that’s something altogether different.
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p>Something positive from the attack, my immediate reaction was to check Gramm-Leach-Bailey Act, the one that repealed the Glass-Steagall. I wanted to see if there was a connection.
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p>At this point we know that Capuano has stood up to the Republican held legislature and Clinton in voting against the repeal of Glass-Steagall. I think that’s something you can add with the Patriot Act and Iraq War votes.
The repeal of Glass – Steagal, which created companies “to big to fail” and the Futures Commodities Modernization act, which legalized the financial kryponite that could lill the “to big to fail” companies are the two of the three things that set up this collapse (the third being the 2004 SEC decision to let investment firms leverage more than $30 of debt for every $1 of assests, so they could gamble at the derivatives “table”).
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p>I;ve never seen the roll call vote on Glass – Steagall and would love to. I assume that Barney and most MA Dems voted “yes” because Barney (as I understand from the teabaggers of the world) forced Graham and the other deregulators to strengthen the CRA, to prevent redlining by these huge companies. This strengthening is what the looney right blames the crisis, which is ridiculous.
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p>Anyway, any link to a roll call?
It was S. 900 back in the 106th Congress and the roll call vote is here.
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p>Only 57 members voted against the bill, including Capuano, Frank, Markey, and Tierney.
This wasn’t a personal attack. It’s a post about a vote Capuano cast. If you think it is slanted unfairly, fine. But since Capuano seems to be getting a lot of mileage out of his legislative experience, and his supporters are quick to point to his AUMF and Patriot Act votes, how exactly is it out of bounds to criticize another vote?
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p>Having a legislative record is a double-edged sword. It gives you a record to stand on, but also requires that certain votes be justified (which is why Governors generally do better than Senators in Presidential races). My takeaway from this isn’t to feel more negatively about Capuano. His heart is clearly in the right place, and the majority of the Mass delegation voted with him. But it’s hardly out of bounds to question or criticize a vote, particularly one that seems to have had such a lasting impact.
that it is in fact looking at his record. Rather it’s pulling out an individual vote and mischaracterizing his record. I see that as an issue that concerns me.
that his record stands for itself. Running on a record means owning the bad as well as the good in that record. As Frank Skeffington noted above, Capuano himself apologized rather unsatisfyingly for this vote at the forum several weeks ago at Merrimack College.
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p>I have not been that impressed by Capuano’s record – I see him as a liberal backbencher. One of my key issues is electing someone prepared to engage on much needed financial reregulation. I’m not convinced Capuano has the right chops for that, and this vote gets directly to my concern.
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p>Please note also that I raised this vote of Capuano’s in a comment in another post, in response to a question of Ryan’s. Liveandletlive decided to make a post around it, initially contending (incorrectly) that Capuano had not voted the way I had indicated. Liveandletlive subsequently corrected the post.
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p>There is no mischaracterizing of anyone’s record here, and truly, that accusation coming from Capuano supporters, given their attacks on Coakley here on BMG, is a hoot. Perhaps the Capuano supporters could start by practicing before preaching to anyone else?
you came out with a one sentence blurb that Capuano voted for the legislation that caused the financial meltdown. So did a lot of other Democrats. You were trying to mischaracterize his record, because you didn’t provide any context to the vote. If you had looked for other relevant information, you would have realized that it was not quite as damaging as you hoped it would be.
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p>He owned it whether you found it satisfying or not. He knows he made a mistake. Either your trust him to learn from it or you don’t. I trust him to learn from it and I intend to remind him by advocating for specific financial system market reforms with his office and others in the House and Senate.
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p>Let’s look at how the other candidate is doing with accountability.
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p>Has Coakley owned her incompetence arguing Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts in front of the Supreme Court, claiming California was party to the suit when in fact it was not. To the contrary, California requires lab techs to testify in court when called by the defense. She asserted as truth something quickly identified as false and central to her argument.
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p>Coakley argued an unbearable burden to have lab techs testify and Kennedy asked her how California managed it. Having been corrected on the facts, the best she could do was say she was unfamiliar with California’s process. He asked her if she didn’t think that might me an important thing to know, you know, given that it was fundamental to her argument (an unbearable burden on states.)
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p>Has Coakley owned bollixing her one and only case in front of the Supreme Court? I’m not saying it was a good case and she lost it, I’m saying she performed extremely poorly and she knows it but she hasn’t owned it.
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p>Her position (the Commonwealth’s position because of her decision to defend the question of limited sixth amendment rights in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts) was to preserve the conviction at the expense of a precedent that has the weight of settled law nationwide that diminishes all citizens’ sixth amendment rights. Are you shocked? You should be.
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p>That’s not the kind of liberal I choose to vote for. That’s not a liberal. Wake up people. She is not an advocate for Constitutional rights when the countervailing interest is government authority. And in this instance her countervailing interest was easily served with new legislation. To wit, rolling back the rights of citizens was unnecessary anyway:
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p>On second thought, maybe it would be better if she were in the senate rather than continued on as AG, although I think she’s had her wings clipped by the Supreme Court and would be less of a threat to our rights now.
And certainly no credit to your candidate.
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p>Your candidate contributed to the financial meltdown through a poor vote and was deeply embroiled in the scandal surrounding PMA, mine did not prevail in a SC case on a technical point about crime lab technician testimony. You think there’s an equilvalence there? Have fun with that.
Doesn’t raise a peep from you when it’s an attack on Coakley. Wow right back.
When she says the precedent that would be set by winning Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts is contrary to the interests of citizens (all citizens nationwide) then we would know her liberal values on Constitutional rights include the right of confrontation for all accused and allow for their defense to question lab techs.
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p>If you want to point out what is untrue or unfair than I’ll accept your characterization of my comment as bile, otherwise you put a lie to the word bile.
I have to admit I am taken back by your description of Capuano. But I do understand that some supporters are very intense about their candidate.
the merits of Capuano as US Senator based on this one vote. I have, however, been curious about this bill ever since someone threw it in my face last year over Bill Clinton signing it into law. There has to be an underlying story here. I don’t believe for one second that Democrats supported this bill in the hopes of ruining the economy, or in the hopes of allowing greedsters to run corruptly with it.
…first, I don’t think anyone intentionally passed a bill to ruin the economy–although that was the result, but many Dems are in the tank with the financial and other special interests that obviously run this country. You got to start reading Matt Tiabbi.
I hate bubbles, which is why I posted this. I am supporting Mike Capuano. I believe in transparency and
honesty. If Mike Capuano is any “pockets”, I want to know.
Do you have any information that might lead us to believe this vote was a kiss to special interests?
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p>Believe me, I am extemely upset about the way the economy has played out over the last ten years. I am even more upset about the way our government has played a role.
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p>I am having a busy day today, so I haven’t had a chance to research this further. But I will continue to work on it.
with Jack Murtha and the PMA group. If you are serious about doing the research, this Phoenix article is worth a read. Some key quotes:
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p>Over the last decade, we’ve repeatedly seen religious right voters back corrupt Republicans who shared and supported their concerns in the culture wars. My question is whether there is a similar situation in play with some liberals’ support for Capuano. Are they overlooking Capuano’s questionable associations and earmarks because of the warm and fuzzy they get from Capuano’s votes on some of their issues, such as the AUMF in Iraq?
OK, I found this information on OpenSecrets.org. PMA was his top contributor in the 2008 cycle for a total of $45,000 dollars. So I guess you could consider that questionable. What I don’t see on his list is contributions from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, so that makes me very happy.
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p>I’m not sure what you mean by this
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p>It is very irritating when Coakley supporters try to entangle words and create a “vision”. By entangling
“we’ve repeatedly seen religious right voters back corrupt Republicans” with “whether there is a similar situation in play with some liberals’ support for Capuano”, you are trying to imply that Capuano is corrupt. I do not believe that Capuano is corrupt. I do not appreciate being compared to a religious right voter, I do not get gushy over the Iraq war vote, I don’t see many people here speak of the Iraq war vote. I am studying who Mike Capuano is before I vote for him. You brought up his vote for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000; I wanted to explore it further. What I have found is that the entire bill voted on was a compromise piece, in a Republican led congress. It is not uncommon for this type of thing to happen. Unless someone can enlighten me further, I have decided this vote is not a reason to stop supporting Mike Capuano. Neither is his contributions from PMA. In the scope of potential malfeasance in collecting contributions over a political career, this is minimal. And no-one knows what we are going to get from any of the other candidates should they be elected.
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In association with accepting contributions from PMA.
but KarenC would make a visit if I did that.
but in consideration of his long career, and in comparison to other elected officials, it could be much worse.
not from any campaign. The money tends to flow from me to candidates, not the other way around, alas.
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p>As I’ve noted repeatedly here on BMG, I like Coakley in this race. I have been doing some light volunteering for her – I collected signatures early on, did some visibilities, provided swag to supporters, will help organize phone banks in my town over the remaining weeks until the primary.
I’d like to know the positions of the four candidates on financial market reform today
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p>1. reforms that accommodate or reform the eliminate “too big to file” financial institutions.
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p>2. capital reserve regulations that protect depositors from investment bank risk-taking without putting taxpayers on the hook.
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p>3. regulate and make transparent the derivative market
I think that was a freudian slip. : )