Today, it’s Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, accusing lenders of hoarding federal funds, thus prolonging the nation’s credit crisis.

From Dodd’s statement delivered during today’s panel hearing on oversight of the Treasury’s bailout:

The acceptance of public funding carries with it a public obligation. One cannot benefit from taxpayer support in all its many forms and assume that one has no duty to serve that same taxpayer.

[…]

Let me say as clearly as I can: hoarding capital and acquiring healthy banks are not — I repeat, are not — reasons why Congress authorized $700 billion in emergency funding.

And that may be true. But altruism and patriotism are not the reasons why banks exist. If the banks are hoarding money, it’s because that’s in their best financial interest. Should it come as a shock to Congress that Wall Street is driven by profit?

Someone should remind the Democrats that they were in charge of writing the legislation that might have forced the same activities they’d so like to see.

The public has soured on both parties, and Congress has its lowest approval ratings in history.  (See: Backlash, Bailout.)  Yet the presidential candidates are still tussling over who is truly bipartisan.

On Thursday afternoon, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton went after Sen. John McCain’s bipartisan street cred. Responding to McCain’s effort to undermine Obama’s bipartisan bailout work, he said:

Not twelve hours after he ran an ad where he decried Republicans blaming Democrats for the financial crisis, John McCain went on TV this morning and blamed Barack Obama for the financial crisis.  Senator McCain’s erratic, unsteady response to this crisis proves how out-of-touch he is with the struggles facing working Americans.

McCain’s recent ads are a reach, as TWI’s Matt DeLong reports, but this whole face-off seems out of touch.

The public cares more about what Congress does to address the financial crisis than whether it does it in a bipartisan way.  On Monday, many members of the House demonstrated precisely that when they rebuffed their leaders and a “bipartisan consensus” to vote against the bailout bill.

Now, yes, symbolism still matters in politics, and clearly the presidential nominees think there is something to be gained by appearing bipartisan at this time.

During his appearance on the Senate floor yesterday, Obama made a point of Crossing The Aisle to greet McCain and mingle with several Republicans.  As the droll pool report explained:

[Obama] walked across to the GOP side of the chamber. He chatted with Lindsey Graham briefly, then approached McCain, who was talking to two other GOP senators. Obama reached his hand to McCain, and they had the briefest of handshakes, not clear on eye contact. (Jim Lehrer would have been unhappy) Obama greeted Graham again and then headed to [Democratic] terrority… (emphasis added)

When it comes to the auras of bipartisanship and eye contact, I think Lehrer is a lonely voice right now.

I’ve been home all day with a sick 8-year-old daughter, so I’m as sensitive as the next guy to how someone is feeling. But we’re talking about a credit crunch that could cripple the entire economy. Small businesses might not be able to make payroll like, tomorrow, depending on their bank. Stocks recorded their biggest one-day point drop ever. And all this because of…. hurt feelings?

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly says it has inspired him to come up with a new Republican slogan:

“Vote Republican — We’re More Concerned With Our Feelings Than Your Future.”

From DeLong:

Here’s my favorite so far, from Atlanta blogger Megan McArdle, usually no fan of government intervention:

I didn’t think it was possible to be more disgusted with politicians than I usually am, but I find it impossible to express the seething contempt that I feel at this kind of opportunism.  I don’t mind when they screw with the normal operation of the economy for venal personal gain.  But risking a recession in order to get a cut in the capital gains tax?  Letting it tank because you can always blame it on the Republicans?

I am grimly reminded of H.L. Mencken’s famous observation that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

The public doesn’t quite grasp what’s at stake, but the representatives do.  The true believers–well, I forgive them their zealotry, and hope that they’re right and I’m wrong.  But anyone who tanks a bank bailout they think might be needed in order to get a cut in the capital gains tax, deserves to be tried for treason.

Well.

Send me your reactions, and I’ll post the best of them.