FOXNews.com - Panel on President's Push for Wall Street Reform - Special Report w/ Bret Baier

FOXNews.com - Panel on President's Push for Wall Street Reform - Special Report w/ Bret Baier


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There is a legitimate debate taking place about how best to ensure taxpayers are held harmless in this process. And that is a legitimate debate, and I encourage that debate.

But what is not legitimate is to suggest somehow the legislation being proposed is going to encourage future taxpayer bailouts as some have claimed. That makes for a good sound bite but it's not factually accurate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: President Obama pitching his financial regulation overhaul at Cooper Union College in lower Manhattan today as the Senate, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he is plowing ahead no matter what toward a vote on financial regulatory reform. And the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell saying shouldn't we understand what is in this? There are a lot of potential consequences for small banks and lending institutions. Let's take our time to reach a bipartisan agreement.

That is what we're dealing with. Let's bring in the panel, Steve Hayes, senior writer for the Weekly Standard; Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio; and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Charles?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I am glad you played the package from the president's speech. We knew what the content was, but I was intrigued and appalled by the tone of the speech and the rhetoric in the sound bite.

The way, and he has done this before — he tries to denigrate, cast- out, and de-legitimize any argument against his. And here he is talking about that it's not legitimate even to suggest that the bill he is supporting might encourage a bailout. It's certainly possible there had been strong, very good economists and others who have argue because of the provisions in the ball, and one in particular, where a treasury has the right to designate any entity, private entity a systemic risk and then to immediately, even without Congress approving and appropriating money to guarantee all the bad loans, that is an invitation to a bailout.

Now the president could argue otherwise, but to say that to raise the issue is illegitimate is simply appalling. What he is doing here is he is making a lot of provisions that will be changing a very complex financial system. At least have the intellectual honesty to admit you can't predict all the outcomes. The president has a tick in which he presents himself as having this sort of academic, reasonable discourse, but it really has inside of it a sharp edge of partisanship. He won the presidency. That gives him a big house, a lot of power, and a fabulous airplane, but does it not make him the arbiter of American political discourse.