As described in that article, Obama lobbied for and signed the 2014 "CRomnibus" although he could have used his veto power to obtain a clean appropriations bill free of the "two offensive provisions." That is what Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats wanted him to do. The House Democrats thought they could defeat the "offensive provisions" simply by timely threat of an Obama veto. At that very moment Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by instead gratuitously announcing his support for the bill. Pelosi said she was "enormously disappointed that the White House feels that the only way they can get a[n appropriations] bill is ... we have to pay off Wall Street." This is as close as Democrats would come to flatly accusing Obama of being a "cheerleader" to get a bill on his desk for that very purpose, to "pay off Wall Street" for the historic campaign contribution debt Obama owed.
The only alternative to that conclusion is Obama's usual, though obviously false, cover story that he is just a hapless incompetent who is still ignorant how veto threats work, for example. Right, except when he is paying off Wall Street. Then Clark Kent becomes a deviously effective super-strategist for plutocracy.
An Appropriations Committee member summed up the quid pro quo purpose of Obama's 2014 Christmastime handiwork: "This bill is a one-two punch at middle-class voters. It weakens financial regulation on big banks and rewards Congress for doing so by increasing campaign donation limits of big donors." Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (2014) 70, describes Congress as "enabling the transformation of the world's biggest banks into bona fide organized crime operations" where no target large enough to attract their attention, such as last year's middle-class bank deposits, or this year's government treasury, is exempt from their political-corruption racket.
Exposing last year's Christmas gift for plutocrats required some slight financial understanding. Congress' repeal of the "swaps push-out rule," so as to give casino capitalist gamblers federal deposit insurance and other federal benefits for banks, guaranteed the eventual bankruptcy of the essential New Deal reform for protecting ordinary bank depositors. The threat of bail-in theft of middle-class bank deposits will thus result from allowing the FDIC to be used as a guarantor for Wall Street's table stakes in the swaps markets instead of keeping it solvent to protect small depositors.
The racketeers got away clean last year without much comment or public shock. So they came back for another heist of comparable ambition, this year in broad daylight. They only needed Obama's continued leadership to succeed. The "mascot of the Wall Street oligarchs" did what he is paid to do, and artfully obliged. He upped his game this year by promoting his gifts for plutocrats as a good thing, rather than just disguising that he's the one wearing the Santa suit.
The 2014 CRomnibus Act introduced a new form of legislation that was overlooked by many. Its repeat performance in the 2015 Omnibus (H.R. 2029) has acquired the image of being just a happy bipartisan annual Christmastime tradition, before Obama flies off to Hawaii. More like a superbowl for lobbyists, it can be awarded the seasonal roman numeral, "CRomnibus II" ("CR," as in CRiminal or CRrupt). Later possible targets for CRomnibus III, IV and so forth? Government procurement, Social Security trust funds, privatizing public education budgets, ongoing mercenary privatization of the military, etc. Wherever the big money is.
B) CRomnibus II
Without going over the same ground again in the same detail as last year about how the plutocrats' annual caper works when Congress unbreaks itself momentarily for its bipartisan Obama-hosted Omnibus felony fiesta, the rules of the game for this illegitimate form of legislation can be briefly stated here.
a) Decree by Junta
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