Robin Hood, nearing European victories, still struggling to awaken in the U.S.

But the AFL-CIO isn’t holding press conferences or spurring its larger membership to action, and many Democratic politicians have remained on the sidelines in the fight for an FTT. Fewer than half of all Democratic members of the House have co-sponsored any of the several bills that have an FTT provision.

Even less support is visible in the Senate, where just three others — Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont — have sponsored or co-sponsored any FTT legislation.

What about other Democrats? The website of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), for example, says that she is interested in reforming Wall Street, in keeping New York the “financial capital of the world,” and in seeing that the government make “aggressive investments in infrastructure.”

We wanted to speak with Sen. Gillibrand regarding her thoughts as to whether an FTT would enhance market stability, redirect financial resources to more productive investments, and help raise revenues that could be applied to funding infrastructure improvements. Her office did not respond to repeated requests.

Gillibrand also did not respond to follow-on emailed questions, including questions asking whether she believed that high-frequency trading posed any problem, why she hasn’t supported any FTT, whether she believed that an FTT rate of three-hundredths of one percent (the Harkin-DeFazio rate) would be unduly burdensome, and whether the existing system of fees on stock transactions used to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission suggests that an FTT could be administered effectively. 

Rep. DeFazio has ideas about why his fellow party members are reticent to support an FTT. “Democrats don’t want to make [Wall Street] too angry,” he said. He was speaking from experience. In his most recent reelection campaign in 2010, DeFazio faced a storm of negative ads paid for by a super PAC called Concerned Taxpayers of America. The organization was co-founded just two months before the election by Robert Mercer, the co-chief executive officer of Renaissance Technologies, a high-frequency trading pioneer.

Though DeFazio ultimately won, other members of Congress got the message. “I’ve had people say to me, ‘Oh [an FTT is] a great idea; sounds interesting,’” DeFazio recounted. “‘Yeah, you made some good arguments [for it] — and aren’t you the one who had the guy from Wall Street who spent [hundreds of thousands of dollars] against him?’”

DeFazio expressed disappointment that Barack Obama hasn’t made an FTT part of his campaign platform. “Where’s the president?” he asked. DeFazio was referring to the fact that Obama, like most of the rest of his party, has remained silent on the issue.

“It’s still early days” in the U.S., said the Robin Hood spokesperson, Matthew Kavanagh, who is also director of U.S. advocacy at Health GAP. He pointed to the European countries that are taking up the FTT. “At this point there’s a key set of willing allies that are moving ahead boldly with an FTT,” he said. “That gives us the best example to say, ‘Look, this is not pie in the sky. It’s not some crazy idea. It’s not something that is going to wreck the market.’”

So far, about 70 organizations in the U.S. have joined the Robin Hood campaign.