Gregg: Blame Obama for breakdown on financial reform

President Barack Obama is to blame for a breakdown in bipartisan talks on financial regulation reform, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) charged Monday.

Gregg, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee, said the president faces two paths on financial reform: partisanship or cooperation.

“Things got sort of turned off when the president decided to go
populist,” the senator said during an appearance on CNBC. “I hope he’ll come back to being substantive on
this issue, and not being political.”

{mosads}Financial reform is one of the top issues facing Democrats as they return to Washington this week, with a bill crafted by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) set to hit the Senate floor soon.

Dodd’s bill made its way out of his committee on a party-line vote last month, a step Dodd had taken after he decided to end his drawn-out negotiations with Republicans on a bipartisan bill.  Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) had negotiated with Dodd during the last 30 days of that process, but Dodd ended those negotiations to move the process forward, and out of a fear that Republicans still wouldn’t support the final product. 

Gregg said that Obama now had a key choice to make, hinting that the president’s path would be central to determining Republican participation in the legislation when it hits the floor.

“One is a political path, where basically they just create an
atmosphere that they want an issue on, where they try to position the
Republican Party as just being for the big financial institutions,” Gregg said. “Or two, a path which says, ‘Hey most of these issues are not partisan’ — and they aren’t. Most of
these issues can be solved by sitting around a table and thinking
through what the best approach is.”

Democrats have characterized Republicans as being in the pocket of big business throughout the process, seizing on remarks House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had reportedly made to bankers, warning them to not let “little punk staffers” in Congress push them around.

Updated at 3:23 p.m.