Bipartisan Corruption... Although 100% Conservative
North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller, was one of Congress’ best members when I first ran into him. In 2004 he introduced legislation to rein in subprime mortgage lending. Yesterday, he told me that now, “two decades later the consumer finance industry’s arguments are still the same, and still phony and tedious. ‘Oh, the soft-hearted but soft-headed people who support these supposed consumer protections mean well but they’ll hurt the very people they want to help.’ And, of course, proposed protections would just help people who won’t take ‘personal responsibility,’ which means people who don’t look like you and live in another part of town.”
I would hope all DWT readers would know by now what Miller said next: “A niche in the ecosystem of Washington influences the people who come up with these arguments, which they hand to lobbyists to give to members of Congress so they can tell their constituents something other than ‘I screwed you blind for campaign contributions and maybe for future employment as a lobbyist.’ The people who come up with the arguments often have gigs on cable news as Republican or Democratic ‘strategists,’ and they say on air that reforms are ‘too liberal’ for Americans to support, when polls show that the reforms are wildly popular. The cable news networks hardly ever disclose what their supposed analysts really do for a living. The Washington establishment blames racism on ignorant, blue-collar bigots, when distracting appeals to racism to defeat reform are lavishly funded by people who went to the right schools, belong to the right clubs, and always know which fork to use.”
Wonder why Miller and I were talking about this yesterday instead of Trump’s 4 indictments and 91 charges or instead of the GOP debate tonight? Well, both of us are concerned about the banksters weighing in again— to put it mildly— in their campaign against even the mildest credit card reform legislation. On Tuesday morning Brenden Pedersen reported that “The banking sector is deploying yet another effort to oppose reforms that would undercut the industry’s [outsized and unjustifiable] profits from credit cards. Later this week, the Consumer Bankers Association will launch a ‘Washington Wallet Watch’ campaign opposing two separate reforms coming from both Capitol Hill and the Biden administration. The group will accuse policymakers of undertaking a ‘misguided political campaign to change how your credit card works, raising costs for consumers and taking away your rewards.’”
I asked another stellar former House Member, Alan Grayson, a current candidate for the Senate seat crooked Florida reactionary Rick Scott is sitting in, because clamping down on anti-consumer practices has always been in his wheel house. “Underneath all of this is the fiction that customers make decisions based on the fine print in the agreements, like late fees,” he told me this morning. “In fact, almost no one does. Because of that, none of the banks has any incentive to rein in fees. If the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or the Federal Trade Commission) had teeth, this would no longer be a problem.” Making sure they don’t grow any teeth is what the banksters pay House Financial Services Committee crooks like Chairman Patrick McHenry and mega-bribe takers Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Roger Williams (R-TX), Bryan Steil (R-WI), Bill Huizenga (R-MI), Bill Foster (D-IL), Joyce Beatty (D-OH), Andy Barr (R-KY), Tom Emmer (R-MN), Ann Wagner (R-MO), Young Kim (R-CA), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Sean Casten (D-IL), French Hill (R-AR) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) to guarantee. Want some specifics?
Current House members who have taken the most from commercial banks:
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $1,782,198
Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $1,539,958
Andy Barr (R-KY)- $1,198,724
French Hill (R-AR)- $1,149,164
Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $1,111,913
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $1,089,766
Or maybe you think would be more valuable to see which current members of the House have taken the most from the whole Finance sector? OK, here are the Big 3, members who should all be in prison:
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $14,607,519
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $10,330173
Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $9,943,736
Or... maybe you’re not interested in ancient history and want to know who’s taking the big money now. OK, this is for 10 current House members for the 2022 cycle who are taking the big loot from commercial banks right now:
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $366,265
French Hill (R-AR)- $245,400
Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $221,710
Andy Barr (R-KY)- $207,990
Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $181,255
Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $171,987
Tom Emmer (R-MN)- $164,178
Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $158,222
Joyce Beatty (D-NY)- $156,750
Bryan Steil (R-WI)- $148,650
And House Financial Services Committee members for the whole sector for 2022— all are among Congress’ most corrupt members and none, regardless of party, should be walking around as free men and women; all belong in prison:
Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $2,995,015
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $2,675,864
French Hill (R-AR)- $1,574,341
Andy Barr (R-KY)- $1,509,668
Ritchie Torres (D-NY)- $1,456,584
Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $1,319,822
Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $1,311,515
Young Kim (R-CA)- $1,268,909
Tom Emmer (R-MN)- $1,225,404
Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $1,217,281
Bryan Steil (R-WI)- $1,188,923
Recall, that was just for the 2022 cycle. Every single one of them is vacuuming up big bucks from the banksters right now. And that brings us back to Pedersen, who wrote that “Credit card policy in the nation’s capital is one of the banking lobby’s top concerns these days. One front traces back to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where regulators proposed limiting most banks’ credit card late fees to about $8. That rule still needs to be finalized before going into effect. On Capitol Hill, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) are pushing the Credit Card Competition Act. The bill would require card issuers to offer a choice of at least two payment companies in electronic transactions, which would undercut a lucrative duopoly maintained by Visa and Mastercard.”
This morning, Rhode Island special election candidate Aaron Regunberg, the progressive in the race, told me that “Bernie and other progressive Democrats in Congress have called the unjustifiably high credit card rates 'extortion and loan sharking.' I like the bill last year sponsored by both our senators, along with Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley to protect Americans from sky-high interest rates— The Empowering States’ Rights to Protect Consumers Act— which would restore states’ ability to limit consumer loan interest rates for their residents. At the time, senator Whitehouse said, ‘Rhode Islanders are feeling a big hit to their wallets from corporate profiteering and inflation, driving some to take on credit card debt to lighten the burden. This bill will empower individual states like Rhode Island to rein in runaway credit card rates and protect their citizens from Wall Street greed.’ Senator Reed was on the same page: ‘States should have the power to protect their citizens, but in this case, federal courts have prevented states with strong consumer protection laws from fully enforcing them. This bill would restore the ability of states to protect citizens from abusive interest rates.’ We need to go even further in protecting consumers but this is a helluva step in the right direction.”
The the banksters and their lobbyists claim, falsely, that “the status quo allows them to offer robust credit card rewards to consumers and simultaneously maintain a secure payment system. But the retail-merchant sector has been squeezed for years by credit card transaction fees that are much higher in the United States than they are abroad. The CBA’s campaign will argue that the fees banks charge are already more transparent than other sectors, thanks to existing laws like the Truth in Lending Act. They’ve chafed heavily at the Biden administration’s push against ‘junk fees,’ which has sometimes lumped in credit card late fees. The bankers are also appealing to ‘personal responsibility,’ arguing that current customer late fees— which hover between $30 and $40— are a fair way to fund reward programs and otherwise cover costs. And when it comes to the Durbin-Marshall bill, the CBA will argue on a soon-to-be-unveiled website that the legislation would ‘establish an unnecessary and unsafe federally-mandated payment network. Hardworking families will pay the price while big box retailers reap rewards.’”
Qasim Rashid is running against a corrupt Financial services Committee, New Dem, Bill Foster. Blue America has endorsed Qasim, in part because of his opponent's corruption-- but more because of what we expect from Qasim in Congress. Last night he told me that “Credit card late fees and banking overdraft fees are a regressive tax on America’s working families— who are most likely to have to pay them. It is far past time for Congress to protect their constituents, not the multibillion dollar global financial institutions. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle— including my opponent— take hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign donations from big banks and credit card companies and let them harm working families with billions of dollars in late and overdraft fees. We must listen to the demands of the American people and reject corporate money in politics.”