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Blow by blow?

Funny — you’d think there would be more cheering. The Journal’s Neil King Jr. and Elizabeth Williamson make a pretty definitive case that Obama has abandoned one of the planks of his campaign, his proposal to “end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.”

Specifically, the Obama administration had hoped to raise $200 billion by ending the tax break that “allows American multinationals to defer paying taxes on revenues earned abroad until companies repatriate them.” The WSJ article is a blow-by-blow description of how big business rallied its forces to oppose closing the tax-deferral loophole and, apparently, won the battle.

- Obama backs off on big business, Salon.com, October 13, 2009.

2. President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in July 2010, hailing it as an overhaul to prevent the kind of crisis that hit the world economy in 2008 and one of the signature achievements of his first term. Almost three years later, much of the big stuff the law calls for is on hold, under legal and legislative assault, or still working its way through the regulatory intestines. According to a law firm that tracks the legislation, only 38 percent of the 398 Dodd-Frank rules have been imposed, while regulators haven’t yet publicly put forward versions of almost a third of them.

Is this the face of success? A new book, “Act of Congress,” by Robert Kaiser, an associate editor and senior correspondent for The Washington Post, gives that question a qualified yes. “The story of Dodd-Frank does demonstrate that Congress still can work,” he writes, “and it shows how, but only in extreme circumstances.”