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I know Democrats like to claim this, but it's not reflected in how their representatives actually vote.
It wasn't house Republicans who spent the 90s pushing for deregulation of the banking industry and greatly reduced corporate tax rates under the guise of "modernizing the 1933 banking act" and "making credit more affordable", It was people like Clinton, Schumer, and Feinsten.
And then after about a decade of the structural issues they had introduced being allowed to fester and grow a leopard came out of nowhere and ate all the bankers' faces.
What do you mean? College graduates supported the GOP over the Democrats all throughout the 90s, Clinton won plenty of rural states (92, 96), and Reagan was pretty famous for being a pathbreaking union buster.
It was though.
Republican controlled both the House and the Senate in 99. Gramm, Leach, and Bliley, the Senators and Representative who proposed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, were all Republicans, and the votes for GLB were 52 Republican Senators in favor vs 38 Democrats, and 207 Republican Representatives in favor vs 155 Democrats. Trent Lott, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, considered it a major victory and later went on to be a bank lobbyist. Clinton governed very much in the mold set by Reagan, and was more in line with GOP regulatory and fiscal policy then and now (ie the recent GOP efforts to cut spending and introduce work requirements for welfare). This is why if you hear about banking regulation nowadays it's likely Democrats passing it and Republicans repealing it.
Separately, idk if Gramm-Leach Bliley did anyone much good but there's isn't agreement that it led to 2008. The Housing securities market already existed and wasn't impacted much by allowing investment and commercial banks to mix (ie Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had never undergone mergers). Imo the structural causes are deeper, a combination of the the New Deal guaranteeing housing loans, thus incentivizing banks to be riskier, plus the Reagan era deregulation on lending in housing, probably plus some other stuff.
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Yes it was; it was Democrats too but at least there were some dissenters. Gramm-Leach-Bliley had about ten votes against in the Senate, only one was Republican, same story in the house. 51 D nays, 5 R nays. And of course, Gramm, Leach and Bliley were all Republicans.
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