Catching up with U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., recently to see how his role as a legislative change-broker is going, I learned he's on a mission to find bipartisan consensus on financial regulatory reform legislation.
Talking about the work he's doing on that issue with U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Sen. Corker said he had decided that if legislators couldn't solve issues facing the nation's banking system in a bipartisan way, then getting anything done might prove difficult.
"Last year," Sen. Corker said, "the Republican and Democratic leaders on the Banking Committee broke down in negotiations, and Sen. Dodd came forth with a partisan bill, one that he crafted himself. That was in early December. I urged him to please not go forward in that fashion, that if we couldn't solve banking regulation in a bipartisan way, there was nothing we could do in a bipartisan way. He listened, and I greatly appreciated that."
When the Senate reconvened this year, Sen. Dodd, who heads the Senate Banking Committee that Sen. Corker serves on, faced another partisan breakdown. To combat that, Sen. Dodd set up teams of Republicans and Democrats to iron out differences, but when that fell apart he reached out again to the Tennessean.
So far so good, as Sen. Corker is working with Sen. Dodd to find legislation Republicans and Democrats can support.
"If we do nothing else, putting into place a resolution mechanism that allows these larger institutions to fail like other companies in this country when they are obviously unsuccessful, and to do so without taxpayer money, is an important thing that we need to get back to," Sen. Corker said.
If it sounds like Sen. Corker is selling out fellow Republicans by working with a Democrat on legislation that is high on President Obama's agenda, then he has an answer for you. It's not about selling out, he says, but moving America forward.
"I know there's been a lot of discussion about (the Obama administration) reaching out to try to create a more bipartisan atmosphere," he said. "But I think the best way to do that is to come forth with what I call centrist, middle-of-the-road, common-sense policies."
Exactly.
E-mail David Magee at dmagee@timesfreepress.com.