[Vision2020] Pimps With Their Hands Out

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 17, 2013
The Cash Committee By THE EDITORIAL
BOARD<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html>

The House Financial Services Committee has grown so large that a highly
unusual fourth row of seats had to be installed in the committee room.
Every term, scores of members, particularly freshmen, demand a seat on the
panel — not because they have a burning interest in regulating banks and
Wall Street, but because they know that they will be able raise much more
money if one of the 61 seats has their name on it.

As Eric Lipton recently explained in The
Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/us/politics/for-freshmen-in-the-house-seats-of-plenty.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all>,
Financial Services has become known as “the cash committee” because
interest groups donate more money to its members than to those of any other
House committee. More than $10
million<http://www.politicalmoneyline.com/tr/tr_MG_SCC.aspx?&td=4_0>has
been given to its members just this year, and most of it has come from
the big names the committee oversees. Contributors included employees of
Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, the Credit Union National Association, the
Investment Company Institute, Wells Fargo and many of the biggest
accounting firms and insurance companies.

Committee members don’t seem particularly ashamed of the favors they do for
those providing the cash. Andy Barr, a freshman Republican from Kentucky,
promised to protect a tax break worth $500 million to credit unions. (They
gave him $15,000.) And he introduced a bill that would allow banks to give
mortgages to people who cannot afford them, undoing a federal rule at the
request of the big banks’ lobbyists. (Banks have given him at least
$47,000.)

That’s a lot of money for a little-known freshman. In fact, the $150,000 he
has taken in from the financial sector in the last six months is almost as
much as those interests gave Speaker John Boehner and other leaders. It’s
the banks’ way of saying, welcome to the committee and our culture, we hope
we can continue to do business. “We make an investment, and we are hopeful
that investment produces a return,” an industry lobbyist told Mr. Lipton.

Many Democrats on the panel are just as eager to join the feeding line, but
the biggest hypocrites are the Tea Party members who claim to be populists.
Tom Cotton, a rising Republican on the committee from Arkansas, recently
announced that he would run for the Senate next year because he was sick of
seeing favors handed
out<http://www.tomcotton.com/2013/08/tom-cotton-announces-u-s-senate-campaign/>“to
the politically connected and the crony capitalists who bend the power
of government for their own private gain.” But that didn’t stop him from
accepting $381,000 so far this year from political action committees,
mostly from finance and insurance interests with business before his panel.

The sleazy flow of cash cries out for a public financing system for
Congressional elections that would give more power to small donors, along
the lines of the Empowering Citizens
Act<http://www.democracy21.org/archives/whats-new/democracy-21-endorses-the-empowering-citizens-act-introduced-by-representatives-david-price-and-chris-van-hollen/>,
introduced by two Democrats, David Price of North Carolina and Chris Van
Hollen of Maryland. But the bill, opposed by Republicans, is going nowhere.
At a minimum, committee members should be required to disclose every time
they vote on an issue that affects donors from which they have accepted
campaign cash. Voters, at least, should know why their lawmakers are so
eager to make friends with the banks.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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