After officially kicking off his general election campaign on Wednesday, Republican Steve Sauerberg has begun traversing the state in his attempt to unseat Sen. Dick Durbin this November.
At a stop yesterday in Springfield, Sauerberg proclaimed: "It is time that voters be given the opportunity to see exactly what their representatives are doing."
In support of this call for transparency we would like to report that while Sauerberg was on the stump, Sen. Durbin was in Washington fighting for hundreds of thousands of homeowners who face foreclosure due to the mortgage crisis.
As we noted a couple of days ago, Durbin has been pushing a proposal to include major protections for mortgage holders as part of the Senate housing relief bill. His plan would allow homeowners to renegotiate the terms of their subprime mortgages in bankruptcy court. The proposal was stripped from the bill itself, so yesterday Durbin tried to add it on as an amendment, putting up a fight worthy of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington":
Durbin argued passionately for the amendment for seven hours before moving to table it, noting that Republicans only showed up on the Senate floor to discuss the bill at the rate of one per hour.
“This really tries my patience,” he said. “At this point in time, we don’t have the appetite in the Senate to face this.”
Among those who most stridently opposed Durbin's proposal were banking lobbyists who "cheered" the tabling of the amendment yesterday, according to The Hill. (Of course, that's unlikely to stop Sauerberg from accusing Durbin of fighting only for "entrenched special interests.")
Without the Durbin amendment, many now consider the Senate bill nothing more than a giant hand-out to the construction industry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to beef up homeowner protections when the measure heads over to her chamber.
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