Is Senator Brown honestly expecting this President to lead us? Not a chance. Only Pod People still think America’s working class has a President on their side.

Meanwhile, God bless Sheriff Dupnik.

There’s a set vote on the tax cut bill on Monday. Nothing else has been scheduled to move today. Bernie is not really blocking anything. This puts Sanders’ speech into the Congressional record; I’m not sure there’s an additional purpose.

But that’s not to say it isn’t important.

The status quo is hopelessly broken, and it threatens economic recovery. The Treasury Department should demand that banks stop the rush to foreclose, and having effective representation for borrowers goes a long way toward that. But when given the option to allow TARP funds to be used for legal aid for foreclosure victims, the Treasury blocked it.

I wasn’t the only one to deride the FHFA’s ingenious plan to end the foreclosure fraud crisis. Indeed, the reliance on internal reviews, and encouragement to engage in more foreclosures, raised the eyebrows of many housing advocates and prominent politicians. Now, six Senate Democrats have sent a letter to FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco and top regulators on the systemic risk council (including Geithner and Bernanke) calling for legitimate action on the servicers, who have no specific federal regulator.

The six Democrats – Sherrod Brown, Barbara Boxer, Sheldon Whitehouse, Debbie Stabenow, Tom Harkin and Mark Begich – pushed back on the idea that these are merely technical errors, as the FHFA letter intimates, rather than systematic violations of the law.

House and Senate liberals expressed their desire on a conference call that they would vote against any set of recommendations from the Catfood Commission if they included benefit cuts to Social Security. That included any increases to the retirement age or privatization.

The choice facing Senators is clear — empower the same exact regulators who failed previously, or fundamentally change the way Wall Street does business, to the benefit of all.

The Sunday talk shows gave the impression that both sides are moving closer to agreement, but aren’t there yet. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Republicans block consideration of the bill when it gets a vote tonight. That doesn’t mean the bill dies, however; Republicans Sunday morning took pains to say they wanted a bill and just wanted to reach an agreement first before bringing it to the floor.

The bill would place a cap on any financial institution, limiting their total assets to 3% of GDP (that would lower to 2% for banks, as opposed to 3% for non-bank institutions). Currently, the 6 largest banks have holdings that equal 63% of GDP. The Safe Banking Act would also impose a 10% cap on any bank holding company’s share of insured deposits. Bank holding companies and “selected nonbank financial institutions” would have a leverage limit of 6%, meaning that they would not be able to lend out more than around sixteen dollars for every dollar of capital in house.

The headline story in the Washington Post today states that Republicans, worried about being seen as too close to the big banks, especially in the wake of the Goldman Sachs scandal, are returning to the bargaining table and supportive of a bipartisan deal. This was how Democrats hoped this would turn out, that they could play a game of chicken and win, and that appears to be the case right now.

However, there’s nothing specific about any deal being discussed, just the notion that there is one in the works.