Republicans Move To Repay Wall Street For All Those Nice Big Bribes

"What do you expect? 'Crook' is my middle name"

Last election cycle the Wall Street banksters poured $83,722,946 into campaign contributions for congressional candidates, $55,447,942 for Republicans and $28,077,244 for Democrats. Their #1 agenda item was to get Congress to further water down Dodd Frank. The House did just that yesterday with Scott Garrett's (more on him tomorrow morning) H.R. 1062, the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act. I should probably mention that, aside from Boehner ($1,415,075) and Cantor ($902,400), Garrett took in more legalistic bribes from the banksters than any other Member of the House ($537,020), including Banking Committee Chairman Paul Ryan ($310,500), House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling ($285,250) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp ($285,050).

Financial Services Committee ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and other Democrats said the bill is just the latest show of opposition to the Dodd-Frank law, which Republicans have held up-- along with ObamaCare-- as a Democratic regulatory overreach.

"Let's be clear: The purpose of this legislative effort is to stop implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act dead in its tracks," Waters said.

Several Democrats noted that Republicans have worked to limit funding to the SEC and other financial regulatory agencies in order to slow the implementation of the law.

During debate, Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) acknowledged a link between the bill and Dodd-Frank. As one example, he cited analysis saying that the SEC's "Volcker rule," which would limit the ability of banks to engage in proprietary trading, could cost more than 1 million jobs.

Hensarling indicated that these sorts of factors need to be weighed more carefully at the SEC. The Volcker rule has been delayed for several years now as the SEC and other agencies wade through thousands of related comments.

Garrett's big wet kiss to Wall Street passed 235-161, every single Republican plus 17 mostly corrupt Democrats voting for it. The bad Democrats yesterday-- for those keeping score:

• Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ)
• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Tony Cárdenas (CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Nick Rahall (WV)
• Raul Ruiz (CA)
• Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)

Don't freak out about not seeing degenerate seeing bank shills Steny Hoyer, Colleen Hanabusa and Ann Kirkpatrick on the list. They were all playing hooky from Congress yesterday.