Imus Gets a Little Too Personal with Senator Chris Dodd

Senator Chris Dodd told his pal Imus that so far, his surgery for prostate cancer was proving successful, and that he was feeling fine, despite having a cold this morning.

“Does your wiener still work?” Imus asked the distinguished Democrat from Connecticut. When no answer came from the Senator, Imus took that as a yes.

As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd’s got weightier issues on his mind, namely his financial reform bill that will soon be debated on the Senate floor.

“It’s designed to make sure we’re plugging the gaps that created the problem,” he said, referring to the near collapse of the financial system in the Fall of 2008. “You had an area of the economy where there were no cops on the beat, no regulators whatsoever.”

Dodd’s bill would create such a “beat,” where regulators would also try to spot a future crisis ahead of time to deal with it effectively, before it swallows up the entire system.

Additionally, the bill focuses on job and wealth creation, which Dodd said occurs only when credit flows. “You want to make sure you’re not strangling the system so your economy can grow and prosper again,” he said.

One of the major contributing factors to 2008’s nightmare on Wall Street was that the “too big to fail” firms had implicit guarantees of a bailout by the federal government should they find themselves in trouble, which they did.

“That’s got to stop once and for all, and this bill does it,” said Dodd. “The presumption now is bankruptcy. That’s the end of it.”

Dodd also realized that consumers of financial assets should be protected in the same way car owners or even toaster owners are. “What happens when your mortgage blows up on you, or your insurance policy, or stock market fraud?” Dodd said. His bill would thus create a consumer protection bureau focused solely on monetary products.

As for how some of the firms that took from the $700 billion taxpayer pot have been able to show profits so quickly, Dodd supposed some of it had to do with them not paying taxes, and getting rebates to the tune of over a billion dollars.

No matter the opposition he faces from Republicans siding with big banks, Dodd vows to pass this bill. “It’s not perfect, it’s not going to solve every problem,” he said. “But we could certainly plug up some of the major gaps and holes.”

President Obama’s health care bill is not perfect either, Dodd admitted, but like his financial reform bill, it is preferable the status quo. “To sit around and do nothing again and hope someday that this problem is going to right itself naturally is foolish,” he said, referring specifically to rising health insurance premium rates in the U.S. “This is a major step in the right direction, it’s a major thing that will happen immediately, and there will be other congresses and other administrations trying to improve upon this in the years ahead.”

Like most people, Dodd, a Catholic, is sickened by stories of abuse emerging from the Church, and by the inaction of the Vatican. Though it’s anathema to the hierarchy of the institution, Dodd believes priests should no longer be forced to remain celibate.

“Of course you’d be for getting rid of celibacy,” Imus said. Following a moment of consideration for his crude comment, Imus observed, “It never changes with me, does it?”

-Julie Kanfer