Dodd's Dicey Dilemma: (Or will screwing up health care make folks forget AIG?)

The passing of Teddy Kennedy has given Chris Dodd a dicey dilemma to deal with.

For months Dodd has been the de facto head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, sheparding a partisan public option health care bill through the committee in Kennedy's absence.

All the while, Dodd was still supposedly chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which now, as the bailout era has reached a pause, reverted to the same lassitude it displayed in 2007 and 2008 as the financial system proceeded to meltdown.

Nevermind that financial market reform was supposedly a high point of President Obama's agenda, and that Secretary Geithner recently took to reaming out other bureaucrats for their lack of support of the administration's effort.  The bill has yet to even be scheduled for committee mark-up.

Now, Dodd can do what Washington politicians suggest would be a good career move--abandon the albatross of his failed chairmanship of the Banking Committee and take over for Teddy on the Health Committee--with the avowed goal of passing Obamacare as a trillion dollar tribute to the late Senator.

Amazingly, the clueless Dodd thinks the entire protest movement over socialized medicine will fade away in the good vibes generated by the Teddy funeral.

Yep, this guy really is so haughty he thinks we will meekly agree to whatever the power brokers on Capitol Hill think is really, really good for us.

Some Connecticut Republicans have other ideas. Like Senate candidate Sam Caligiuri      

Sure the lefties are upset but someone has to call out Chris Dodd on this!

Caligiuri is outraged that Dodd would leave the Banking Committee without cleaning up the monumental mess that the chairman has made of the financial economy.

Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Sam Caligiuri today started an online petition calling on Senate Majority Leader Reid to force Senator Dodd to do his job at the Banking Committee rather than leaving it to take over the chairmanship of the Health Committee left vacant by the death of Senator Kennedy. Caligiuri issued the following statement:“At the end of my tenure on this committee," Senator Dodd said in early 2007 of his role at Banking, "I want it to be said that the safety and soundness of our financial institutions was not weakened on my watch.” (See the full article here) As of today, it must be said that Chris Dodd failed and the safety and soundness of our financial institutions has been badly weakened over the past two-and-a-half years since Senator Dodd’s comment. Now, at a time when our economy and our financial institutions need oversight and attention to ensure our country is on the road to financial recovery, Chris Dodd has conveniently taken on a new and massive undertaking with the current health care debate – yet he still is grossly negligent in the job he is supposed to do – protecting our financial institutions. It is time for him to actually complete the task assigned to him at the Banking Committee, not to try and pass it along to another senator and sweep his failings under the rug. 

If you think Chris Dodd should clean up the mess he already made, before making a new mess out of the nation's health care system, you can sign this petition here.

We'll how eager Harry Reid is to anger Connecticut voters even further by letting Dodd pull a switch akin to that of Bob Torricelli. 

Chris Dodd thinks he can move on to something more pleasant and leave the nation's damaged economy to someone else to fix. He abandoned the Banking Committee before to run for President. Now he wants to abandon it again so he can pretend to be Teddy Kennedy and improve his fading chances for re-election.

Connecticut voters are a little smarter than that, Chris.  You may try and quit us; but we're ready to fire you.