Democrats in the U.S. Congress are finally starting to catch on that Americans are angry that the massive bailout payments to Wall Street financial firms have failed to translate into an economic recovery that benefits people outside of the small circles of corporate executives. And what are these congressional Democrats doing about it? Well, some of them are giving nice speeches.

Representative Mary Kaptur, for example, said on Wednesday,

“The conventional wisdom flowing through the media to our Nation is that without the Wall Street bailout, America would have gone into economic depression and many banks would have failed. Well, the bailout passed. But think about it, then America fell into depression. Unemployment skyrocketed, and since January of last year, 141 banks have failed and been resolved through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation with more to come. Yet the biggest banks that did the damage were rescued rather than broken up and held accountable. These big banks gambled wildly, taking huge risks with our money and our mortgages, and now they are transferring their trillions of dollars of mistakes to our taxpayers for generations to come. What’s wrong with this picture?

The public’s anger is rising, rightly. That can make a difference because that will affect elections. Yet the powerhouses of Wall Street who took TARP money within a year are earning the strongest profits in America compared to every other business, and they are handing themselves exorbitant bonuses, over $150 billion and counting. Clearly what Congress did was incorrect.

America has fallen into a deepening depression, more unemployment, with projections for a jobless recovery, with rising trade deficits, which weren’t supposed to happen because of the value of the dollar. Why? Because the financial crisis was resolved in the wrong way. The financiers who created this house of cards are still rewarding themselves and doing a reverse Robin Hood – taking from others to reward the privileged few. That doesn’t sound like the America I know.”

Those are nice words, but what has Representative Kaptur actually done to back them up? Well, it turns out that she has done her part. A month ago, Kaptur introducted H.R. 4377, the Return to Prudent Banking Act. The bill would help to prevent further financial problems like the crash of 2008 by restoring aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law passed during the Great Depression, and then dismantled in our generation. The Glass-Steagall Act once kept commercial banks out of the business of risky financial speculation.

Introducing that legislation was a good idea, but the problem is that nobody in Congress has Marcy Kaptur’s back on this issue. H.R. 4377 has gained precisely zero cosponsors. Not even strong progressives like Dennis Kucinich have signed their names to the bill.

On the other hand, Dennis Kucinich has introduced another strong piece of legislation, the Responsible Bankers Act, H.R. 4414. That bill would, if passed, place a 75 percent tax on excessive bonuses received by Wall Street executives.

Kucinich’s bill has 8 co-sponsors so far:

William Lacy Clay
Elijah Cummings
Keith Ellison
Phil Hare
Hank Johnson
Steve Kagen
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C., non-voting member)
Diane Watson

Notice who’s not in this list? Well, a great number of members of the House of Representatives aren’t, but Marcy Kaptur’s absence is plain to me. Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur ought to be cross-endorsing each other’s bills. Their failure to do so calls to attention a general lack of systematic legislation from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in Congress.

Speaking out in anger at the economic injustices of the last few years isn’t enough. Working Americans need to be represented by members of Congress who are willing to get organized.