Was Tom Garrett Drunk When He Made His Staffers Pick Up His Dog's Poop?

I was talking with a friend of mine, a top congressional staffer, the other day about a drunk congressman. He mentioned-- without judgment-- that it would be easier and far quicker to make a list of sober members of Congress than a list of the alcoholics serving in that branch. No wonder a deranged-- and possibly senile-- lunatic like Trump can run circles around them!

Tom Garrett is a far right backbencher from Virginia's 5th district, which runs from the DC exurbs around Warrenton and the Bull Run Estates clear down through Charlottesville, Farmville, Bedford, Appomattox, Gretna and Danville to the North Carolina border. The district has an R+6 PVI and Trump beat Hillary there 53.4% to 42.3%. When Republican incumbent Robert Hurt retired in 2016, state Senator Tom Garrett beat Jane Dittmar 207,758 (58.2%) to 148,339 (41.6%). He's a Trump lackey with one of the worst attendance records in the House.

Last week Garrett and his wife were accused by his congressional staffers of using them as personal servants. With an Ethics Committee certainly in the offing, he went back and forth several times about retiring and then announced on Monday that he had to leave Congress to seek treatment for alcoholism. Remember, this is a jackass who had been palsy walsy with the KKK and neo-Nazis who caused mayhem at last August's Charlottesville white supremacist rally.

The Republican Party is likely to pick state Delegate Nick Fretias (who doesn't live in the district) to run against already-nominated Democrat Leslie Cockburn, a progressive who beat the DCCC/Blue Dog candidate J.D. Huffstetler. about a month ago. (Cockburn is another official Democratic nominee who the DCCC has been refusing to get behind.) She's been outraising Garrett, as of April 8, $715,038 to $432,330. Currently Cockburn has $271,114 in her war chest and Garrett has $133,275. Freitas, who has been running for the U.S. Senate against Tim Kaine, currently has $251,694 in his war chest.

Garrett is the 44th House Republican who will either retire or not seek reelection this year, according to CNN’s retirement tracker.

His announcement walks back his previous statement on Thursday when he said he would continue his reelection bid in a bizarre and rambling press conference.

"Yesterday, in frustration, I said, 'I don't know if I can do this anymore'-- in the last 24 hours I've had an opportunity to think and pray a lot,” Garrett said Thursday. “And guess what? This country was founded by people who took great risks to do what they thought was right and the sacrifices that my wife and I make are not small, but they pale in comparison to those who play God in their lives.”

He added, ”And with that, I will tell you that there is no way in heck that I'm not going to be back here in 2019 as a member of the Congress representing the 5th District of Virginia because too darn much is at stake."

The change of heart also follows a bombshell report from Politico last week where ex-aides accused the congressman and his wife of treating them like servants, including having them do menial tasks such as picking up groceries and clothes and cleaning up after the family dog.

Alienating The Base-- A Tale Of Two Primaries... Arizona And New Jersey

Many Arizona Republicans see Jeff Flake through this Alt-Fact lens

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has a long history-- mostly in the House-- as a right-of-center conservative. His record is very conservative but, unlike so many of his colleagues, not unhinged or deranged. He's a Mormon and his very vocal opposition to Trump seems to have been based on the same sense of decency and deep-seated beliefs that most Mormon leaders expressed during the election. Trump did significantly worse in Mormon communities than other Republicans did. In 2004, George W Bush took 80% of the Mormon vote. In 2012 Romney took 78%. Trump won 61% of the Mormon vote nationally.

We have written before than Trump's political operatives are hoping to defeat Flake in his 2018 reelection bid, preferably with neo-fascist Trumpist Jeff DeWit, Arizona state Treasurer. Another extremist who would likely be fine with the Trump Regime is extremist former state Senator Kelli Ward, another neo-fascist crackpot. When she challenged John McCain last year, McCain pulverized her 302,532 (51.2%) to 235,988 (39.9%).

A Republican mid-November poll looked sketchy for Flake. Trump's favorable rating among Republicans then was 82% and Flake's was just 30%. Wade scored 19% and DeWit came in at 35%. Head-to-head match-ups showed Ward tying Flake 35-35% and DeWit beating him 42-33%. DeWit would have also won a 3-ways primary:

• DeWit- 38%
• Ward- 15%
• Flake- 30%

Over the weekend Ward released a new poll of likely Republican primary voters from Political Marketing International. It shows Ward pulling ahead of Flake in a head-to-head match-up, 30% to 23%. Ward didn't released any polling that included DeWit, but she did boast that she was the "most conservative member of the Arizona State Senate in 2015" and reminded whomever reads her stuff that Flake is "one of President Trump's biggest foes."

[Note: Political Marketing Strategies is not a well-regarded firm and is pretty much considered one of those companies that delivers whatever results they're paid to deliver. Ward paid them $5,000 for this poll. She is touting it in a press release claiming Flake is "in freefall."]

That said, Flake, a freshman, could be in trouble with Arizona Republican primary voters. He's been a tad too independent-minded for most knee-jerk Republicans and if Trump really decides to make an example of him, he could be toast, even though Trump doesn't have an impressive track record interfering in GOP primaries. A North Carolina incumbent he strongly backed, Renee Ellmers, was eviscerated, barely coming in third in a 3-way race (George Holding- 53.4%, Renee Ellmers- 23.6%, Greg Brannon- 23.0%, just 207 votes separating the latter two). And Thursday, Trump's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo in KS-04, Alan Cobb, was badly beaten by run-of-the-mill establishment Republican Ron Estes.

Across the country, if not quite across the political spectrum, one of the very worst and most corrupt far-right Democrats elected in November, worthless Blue Dog, Josh Gottheimer (NJ) is well aware he's going to attract major Republican opposition in 2018. NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford to beyond the Delaware Water Gap. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Soprano's Bada Bing club town). In 2012 Romney beat Obama there by 3 points and this year Hillary managed to have beaten Trump 48.8% to 47.7%.

Gottheimer beat the incumbent Republican, bizarre extremist Scott Garrett, 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%). Garrett managed to win in Sussex, Warren and Passaic counties but Bergen County voters were sick and tired of him and gave Gottheimer the 18,000-plus vote cushion he needed. Gottheimer immediately joined the Blue Dogs and started voting with the Republicans. Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Ryan and the NRCC were happy to see Garrett lose and they shut off the party spigots. Pelosi and the DCCC wasted over $3.8 million boosting a corrupt reactionary will will almost never vote for any progressive legislation. His ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is one of the worst of any Democrat's in the House-- 20% which basically means he's voting with Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy on virtually every one of their agenda items, giving them the opportunity to call their destructive proposals "bipartisan." Gottheimer is already damaging the Democratic brand and alienating Democratic voters. Obviously, he hasn't been involved with any resistance to Trump at all. Bergen County activists already hate him and are unlikely to support his reelection bid-- one that the Observer speculates could be a huge national circus, featuring xenophobe and racist asshole 72 year old Lou Dobbs, a longtime New Jersey resident lives in Sussex County, on a 300-acre horse farm in Wantage. The Observer analysis of the 2018 race is interesting, except that it's based on entirely incorrect numbers. For example they claim Garrett won 125,861 to 101,859 but that was before absentee and mail in ballots were counted and he actually won 156,863 to 146,643. So I'm going to throw out their faulty numbers are just use the bits of the sloppy journalism they got right.

In 2016... more voters fell off from Trump to Garrett than Clinton to Gottheimer. One can reasonably conclude that Gottheimer will be hurt more by running without a presidential candidate atop the ticket than the Republican challenger will be.

Voter registration (as of 11/30/2016): Republicans 144,959; Democrats 142,717; Unaffiliated 222,193. So it’s a slight GOP edge, but off-year elections tend to favor Republicans, though not necessarily in the first off-year election of a Republican presidency, when voters may be looking to apply a “check” on the president’s power.

...Prior to Gottheimer, the last time a Democrat won the GOP-leaning 5th was in 1974, when Andy Maguire upset 11-term incumbent Bill Widnall in the Watergate year. Maguire held on until 1980, when Roukema washed him out in the Reagan tidal wave.

The biggest question here, of course, is whether the GOP can lure a marquee candidate like Dobbs to run. With a huge national profile and over a million Twitter followers, he’d start with a strong base of support. But a Congressional seat might not seem like an attractive prize to a guy who’s been hosting his own show on national television for decades and has a closet full of Emmy and Peabody Awards.

Republicans will then have to see if Garrett runs again. He’s never been popular among establishment Republicans-- he ran close primaries against Roukema in 1998 and 2000. Garrett lost because of his own quirks and oddities, not because of his party affiliation. His odd refusal to pay dues to the Party unless it disavowed support for gay candidates sent buckets of national money into the coffers of Gottheimer, which hurt all Republicans in the district, especially the more moderate Bergen GOPers.

Two conservative northwest NJ Senators live in the district: Mike Doherty, 53 (R-Oxford) and Steve Oroho, 58 (R-Franklin). Doherty was the first NJ GOP pol to endorse Donald Trump. He’s encouraged speculation of runs of his own for statewide office since 2008, but he never pulls the trigger. Others include Assemblyman Parker Space, 48 (R-Wantage) and former state Labor Commissioner Hal Wirths, 51 (R-Wantage).

Of strong interest will be whether Bergen can come up with a high-quality, consensus candidate-- with or without Garrett. The bench is a bit depleted up there, but strong choices might include Assemblywoman Holly Shepisi (R-River Vale), 45, seeking fourth term in the Assembly; Assemblyman Robert Auth (R-Old Tappan), 60, seeking third term in the Assembly; Republican State Chairman Samuel Raia, also the Mayor of Saddle River. Of these, Shepisi probably holds the strongest crossover appeal, while Raia has personal wealth.

Bergen lining up behind a consensus candidate might just be enough to ensure that person is the nominee. But at this writing, the BCRO might be in denial. Its website still shows Garrett as the Congressman.

Gottheimer deserves a primary opponent but I doubt if he has one it will be serious enough to deny him the renomination. There are local activists working to recruit someone to run against him. He deserves to be weakened enough so that he loses. He is inexorably dragging the congressional Democrats further right and further into Wall Street corruption. He could solve the Republicans' problem in NJ-05 by switching parties; it would make the most sense... and he wouldn't even have to change his voting habits.

Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-- The Ultimate Sore Loser

Loser and extremist loon, Scott Garrett (R-NJ)

Aside from being the home of the Bada Bing strip club from The Sopranos, NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford through the Delaware Water Gap and beyond my old home in Stroudsburg. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Bada Bing club town). Politically, this is Chris Christie country although Sen. Bob Menendez won the district with 51% last time he ran. McCain won the district in 2008, 51-48% and Romney won in 2012, 52-49%. The congressman from the area, Scott Garrett, is the most extreme right congressman from New Jersey-- and the entire northeast United States-- since he was first elected in 2002. He was reelected in 2014 with 55.7% against political novice Roy Cho, who spent $1,251,518 to Garrett's $2,245,456. This year, though, the DCCC found themselves a revolting Blue Dog and pushed him bigly.

Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Garrett, until recently a Wall Street fave (as the anti-regulation sociopath chairman on the House Financial Services Committee's subcommittee on Capital Markets), only got $674,888 from the Finance Sector this cycle, way down from the $1,159,579 he scooped up from them in 2014 or the $1,224,313 he got in 2012. They wanted him to lose this year.

So on November 9, Bergen County residents woke up to some good news and some bad news. The good news was that Scott Garrett was on the losing end of a 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%) result. It was the Bergen County voters who had finally grown tired of Garrett's extremism and who had turned him out. In 2012 he won Bergen County with 100,874 votes. This time, which far more people voting, only 93,430 in Bergen County went for Garrett. 121,875 voted for Gottheimer. And that's the bad news, of course: Gottheimer won. It looks like this will turn out to be the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. Outside spending was through the roof. Ryan's House Leadership PAC and the NRCC refused to spent a nickel on the widely disliked Garrett. Only another of crooked hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer's PACs, the American Principles Fund, kicked in any substantial money for Garrett-- $309,025. Meanwhile, smelling blood in the water, the DCCC and it's allies, excited to get another slimeball Blue Dog into Congress, spent a gargantuan $6.4 million attacking Garrett and bolstering Gottheimer. It worked. I wonder if they'll think it was worth it when Gottheimer becomes a regular supporter of Paul Ryan's agenda.

Gottheimer joined both the Blue Dog and the New Dems caucuses, as expected-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Members have been telling me that he and Ro Khanna, another fake Democrat who was largely financed by the Finance Sector, by anti-union charter school billionaires and by Republicans, seem to be joined at the hip and are always walking around the Capitol together. Who Gottheimer is not walking around with is Garrett, who has been absent from Congress, furious at Ryan and the NRCC and refusing to show up for work (although still being paid, of course).

Yesterday, Herb Jackson, the DC correspondent for the Bergen Record reported that after an especially bitter campaign, Garrett is doing his best to sabotage Gottheimer's transition.

In an interview about his orientation as a new member of Congress, Gottheimer told The Record that Garrett has not returned his calls or responded to a certified letter asking about a transition, especially to ensure constituent requests do not fall through the cracks.

“I called him," Gottheimer said Thursday. "I sent him a letter before Thanksgiving both thanking him for his service as well as asking him to meet to discuss the transition. My chief also reached out to his chief of staff. We just haven’t heard back.

“My biggest thing is, these constituent issues are not partisan issues. Helping a veteran or a senior, making sure they get their Social Security, or helping a business that has an issue, this election should not affect their lives,” Gottheimer said.

...While polarizing politics is all too common, Garrett's apparent unwillingness to discuss a transition with his successor is not.

The last time a Democrat captured a New Jersey seat that a Republican had held was in 2008, and Democrat John Adler not only worked on the transition with the retiring incumbent , H. James Saxton, Adler even kept one of Saxton’s constituent service aides on his payroll.

When Adler was defeated two years later by Republican Jon Runyan, he transferred his outstanding constituent files to the offices of the state’s two Democratic senators. Garrett’s office has not made similar outreach to either Sen. Cory Booker or Sen. Bob Menendez, their offices said.

“We have not been contacted by Garrett’s office, but constituents have begun to call,” Menendez spokeswoman Tricia Enright said. “They say they were told Garrett’s office is not taking any new cases and they’re telling constituents to contact Sen. Menendez or Sen. Booker.”

At the non-profit Congressional Management Foundation, which has a contract with the House to provide training services to members, President Brad Fitch said he had heard of only one other case in the past 10 years in which there was no cooperation between an outgoing and an incoming member. Fitch said it is not unusual for some materials to be withheld, such as electronic databases of constituent contacts, especially if party control is changing hands, but files about constituents are a different story.

...Along with being New Jersey’s most expensive House race ever, the Garrett-Gottheimer campaign was particularly nasty practically from the start. Gottheimer’s ads said Garrett was being investigated for ethics violations, when all that had happened was an advocacy group made an allegation that appeared to go nowhere.

Garrett, meanwhile, used a civil lawsuit that was ultimately withdrawn as the basis for ads saying Gottheimer had assaulted a female neighbor, when the lawsuit itself said he had only wagged his finger in the woman’s face and did not touch her.

In their only debate, the candidates argued over who was a better liar.

Garrett initially declined to concede on Election Night, saying there were tens of thousands of votes still be counted. With no further reference to those votes, he put out a statement the following day thanking his supporters and lamenting the results “were not what I hoped for.” The statement never mentioned Gottheimer.

Bada bing!


UPDATE: Moratorium On Saying Mean Things About Ro Khanna

I wrote the above post before had some exchanges with Ro Khanna we told me he's going to be a lot different than what I expected-- a lot better-- and that I should have an open mind. And I will. Among other things, he said "My grandfather spent four years in jail with Gandhi fighting British colonialism. My aspiration is to help end the colonial model of the world. I am a progressive. My heart is in the right place. I hope we can build a relationship and you can email me regularly if there are key votes or issues you think we need a strong progressive voice on." Who could ask for more? So no more Ro Khanna-bashing around here. And if it starts up again, you'll know exactly why.

Will The Payday Lender Bribery Scandal End Scott Garrett's And Farmer Fincher's Miserable Political Careers?

Wall Street shill Scott Garrett represents Lodi, home of the Bada Bing strip club from The Sopranos

Last week we talked about a new payday lender scandal breaking in Washington because of bribes that were taken by something like a dozen slimy Members of Congress. Campaign contributions were delivered and legislative favors were given return. "A dozen lawmakers received campaign contributions from payday lenders at around the same time they were introducing bills and writing letters benefiting the high-cost cash-advance industry."

Happily, local newspapers in the districts of the criminal-congressmen have begun picking up on the story. One of the most corrupt men ever to stalk the halls of Congress looking to sell his ass, Wall Street whore Scott Garrett (R-NJ), was one of the first to feel the wrath of the local media in Bergen County:

Garrett is one of 11 House members cited in an ethics complaint filed Monday by a watchdog group that accuses lawmakers of taking actions to protect the payday loan industry around the time they received campaign contributions.

The complaint by the Campaign for Accountability asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Garrett and 10 others, including two Democrats. Most are members of the House Financial Services Committee, on which Garrett is a subcommittee chairman.

The group’s complaint requests an investigation into whether the House members “violated House rules and criminal law,” but there is no guarantee any investigation will be conducted or that any official decision about the complaint’s merits will become public.

The complaint against Garrett focuses on $3,500 in contributions he received between March 2011 and August 2013, a time when his campaign account raised nearly $2.6 million, according to an analysis by The Record of records filed with the Federal Election Commission. In both years, the contributions were made within weeks of an official act Garrett took that would have protected payday lenders from government scrutiny, the watchdog group charges.

“Those contributions seem to be directly tied to actions that he took and that, from our perspective, is really the key here,” said Ann Weismann, executive director of the Center for Accountability. “I understand members accept contributions from industry all the time and there’s nothing per se illegal about that. It is illegal if you accept contributions and it is in exchange for exercising your official authority or taking an official act.”

...The complaint notes that the indictment in April of Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from Paramus, accused him of bribery for allegedly performing official acts around the time his codefendant, Salomon Melgen, made contributions to a political committee supporting Menendez’s 2012 re-election.

The ethics complaint against Garrett says he signed on as a cosponsor of a bill that the Campaign for Accountability says would have limited the CFPB’s oversight of the payday loan industry on March 16, 2011. On March 31, 2011, he received a $1,000 contribution from payday lending executive Ian MacKechnie of Amscot Financial.

The bill, which was not enacted, would have replaced the management of the bureau, currently by a presidentially appointed director, with a five-member commission made up of a vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and four appointees requiring Senate confirmation.

Payday lenders offer small loans that borrowers agree to repay within a short period of time, such as from their next paycheck. The lenders have been criticized for trapping people who are least able to pay into a cycle of ever-rising debt because people who cannot repay are offered bigger loans with higher fees.

Garrett also signed an Aug. 22, 2013 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FDIC Chair Martin J. Gruenberg opposing a program called “Operation Choke Point,” which was designed to prevent “payday lenders and other unscrupulous Internet-based companies from gaining access to the banking system through intermediaries,” the complaint said. On Oct. 4, 2013 Garrett received a $2,500 contribution from the political action committee of payday lender QC Holdings Inc.

Garrett got the smallest total amount of contributions of anyone in the ethics complaint. Amounts received by others ranged from $5,000 to $68,200... Possible violations listed in the ethics complaint include bribery, honest services fraud, acceptance of an illegal gratuity, and conduct not reflecting creditably on the House. Any member of the public can request an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics, and the watchdog group’s allegation has no legal authority.

You remember Tennessee hypocrite Stephen "Farmer Fincher" Fincher from a different type of scandal a couple of years ago which saw him taking millions of dollars in taxpayer money, while leading an effort to cut food stamps for families living in poverty. (It didn't make any impression on the voters in grotesquely gerrymandered TN-08-- Memphis' white suburbs north to Jackson, Dyersburg and Union City-- who reelected Fincher last year with 70.8% of the votes cast.) This week both the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Knoxville News focused on Farmer Fincher's newest bribery scandal. His constituents in the Memphis 'burbs were reading that "payday loans taken out by their constituents helped fund big paydays for members of Congress who used their positions to advocate on behalf of this unscrupulous industry... The allegations against Fincher, a Frog Jump Republican who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, involve $13,500 in contributions from the payday lending industry or its executives."

The execrable bribe-taking Farmer Fincher (R-TN)

According to the complaint:

• On July 19, 2012, Fincher signed on as co-sponsor of a bill that would have negated actions to safeguard consumers from the risks of products offered by the payday lending industry. Ten days earlier, he received $5,000 in campaign contributions from payday lending executives Dennis and Kimberly Gardner of the Equity Management Group. Five days after co-sponsoring the bill, Fincher received a $2,500 campaign contribution from payday executive William Allan Jones of Jones Management.

• On June 3, 2013, less than a month after Fincher co-sponsored a similar bill, he received a $1,000 campaign contribution from a payday lending industry political-action committee, the American Financial Services Association PAC.

• On Aug. 22, 2013, Fincher signed a congressional letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder and Martin J. Gruenberg, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., complaining about the Justice Department's "Operation Choke Point," which was designed to "prevent payday lenders and other unscrupulous Internet-based companies from gaining access to the banking system through intermediaries." About three weeks earlier, Fincher had received a $5,000 campaign contribution from the Cash America International Inc. PAC, a payday lending industry PAC.

Fincher's office declined to comment.

And there's a Florida Democrat with a shady record as a bribe-taking judge, Alcee Hastings, who must be uncomfortable with the local coverage he's been getting.

Congressional ethics investigators will review allegations that South Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings and 10 other House members took bribes by accepting campaign contributions from the payday lending industry shortly before or after taking official actions in support of the industry.

...Here’s what Hastings, a 23-year House member whose district includes much of Broward and parts of Palm Beach and Hendry counties, is accused of in the letter:

• May 21, 2013. Hastings co-sponsored HR 1566, legislation that Allied Progress said would “undermine oversight of payday lenders by allowing them to bypass the regulatory authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and stronger state laws.” On March 27, 2013, he received a $2,500 campaign contribution from payday lending executive Ian MacKechnie of Amscot Financial. MacKechnie contributed another $500 to Hasting’s campaign on June 28, following Hasting’s support for HR 1566. In all, Hastings and five other congressmen who supported the measure, or similar legislation, received a total of more than $72,000 in contributions from industry executives or PACs, the letter says.

• July 10, 2014. Hastings co-sponsored HR 4986, a bill aimed at ending Operation Choke Point, a Department of Justice initiative investigating banks and their connections to payday lenders, payment processors and others at higher risk for fraud and money laundering. Three weeks earlier, Hastings accepted a $2,500 contribution from Cash America International Inc. PAC, a payday lending industry PAC. Industry PACs sent another $26,000 to the campaigns of four other congressmen.

The other crooked congressmen involved in the scandal include Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) Pete Sessions (R-TX), Steve Stivers (R-OH) and Kevin Yoder R-KS).

New Jersey Extremist Scott Garrett Finds His Base Turning On Him

NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford through the Delaware Water Gap and beyond my old home in Stroudsburg. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi. The Sopranos was set there and Lodi was the location of the Bada Bing strip club. Politically, this is Chris Christie country although Sen. Bob Menendez won the district with 51% last time he ran. McCain won the district in 2008, 51-48% and Romney won in 2012, 52-49%. The congressman from the area, Scott Garrett, is the most extreme right congressman from New Jersey-- and the entire northeast United States-- since he was first elected in 2002. He was reelected in 2014 with 55.7% against political novice Roy Cho and in 2012 he won with 55.0% against Adam Gussen, Deputy Mayor of Teaneck. Cho spent $1,251,518 to Garrett's $2,245,456 and Gussen spent $51,444 to Garrett's $1,105,177. Neither Democrat was backed by the DCCC, which hasn't gone up against Garrett since giving some minor help to Dennis Shulman (the blind rabbi) in 2008.

The source of Garrett's power and campaign money stems from his position on the House Financial Services Committee, where he is widely considered a prime spokesperson for Wall Street banksters. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises he has been in a position to make sure Wall Street priorities become Republican policy, just the way he has worked for Vegas mobster Sheldon Adelson, sponsoring a federal prohibition of online poker and for Big Oil, making himself a pariah among New Jersey Republicans by being the only member of the New Jersey delegation to vote for oil and gas drilling off the state's coast and the only member to vote against restrictions on price gouging by oil companies. He is probably the most right-wing Member of Congress from New Jersey in history but Wall Street has backed him to the hilt-- until now.

Last cycle the Finance sector (Wall Street) only paid out legalistic bribes of a million dollars or more to 10 current Members of the House who were not running for Senate seats. Garrett was one of them, taking $1,171,579, even more than Wall Street's pet Democrat, Patrick Murphy, who gobbled up $1,127,650 in bribes. since Garrett's first congressional election Wall Street has given him $4,347,936, nearly as much as their House darlings Paul Ryan ($4,936,303) and Pete Sessions ($4,740,807). But many on Wall Street have now had it with Garrett's extremism and have decided to cut him off.

Garrett, likely to be a target of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's jihad against extremists, declared two months ago that he would stop paying dues to the NRCC for not being anti-gay enough. He'd voted against reelecting Boehner to the Speaker's job. Boehner and his team take it as part of the right-wing rebellion against his authority. Boehner told Financial Services Committee chair Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) to crack the whip on Garrett and Garrett responded that "his procedural vote against leadership was a matter of conscience. Then he stunned the room with this explanation: He had not supported the NRCC in the past, he said, because it actively recruited gay candidates and supported homosexuals in primaries." This flipped out North Carolina closet queen Patrick McHenry, a junior member of leadership, who led the NRCC’s candidate recruitment during the 2014 election cycle and said that Richard Tisei, a gay Republican whom the NRCC supported, was "equally homosexual" when Garrett donated directly to him in 2012.

The northern New Jersey Republican has not yet paid his dues to the NRCC. He has a serious opponent this cycle. Josh Gottheimer, a former speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, raised $412,000 last quarter and has almost $600,000 in the bank. NRCC Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon declined to say whether the campaign arm would get involved in that-- or any-- race.

"I’m not going to talk about who we’re going to support and who we’re not going to support anywhere across the line, because hopefully we don’t have to come into races like that," Walden said of Garrett’s race. "He’s been able to raise a lot of money, he’s got a lot of money in the bank-- close to $3 million. My preference is we have members who pay their dues in full."

But, as Walden well knows, new Wall Street money isn't going to be as available to him as it has in the past-- and will be available to conservaDem Josh Gottheimer who one New Jersey pundit termed "a conservative Jew who loves Wall Street more than lox." He's getting huge help from "top veterans of the Clinton and Obama administrations, over $219,000 in March alone. Obama and Clinton big-wigs like Patti Solis Doyle, Mack McLarty, who was President Clinton’s chief of staff; Julius Genachowski, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; Sandy Berger, former national security adviser to Clinton; Paul Begala, Clinton political strategist and media commentator; and Jennifer Palmieri, communications director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, are helping him in his bid to oust the hated Garrett.

The outpouring of support for a challenger is unprecedented this early in the campaign cycle in the Republican-leaning 5th District, a place Democrats in North Jersey have repeatedly said they could win if a candidate could raise enough money to define Garrett on New York television.

Gottheimer is a North Caldwell native who moved back to North Jersey with his family three years ago. A corporate strategist for Microsoft, he previously worked for the FCC and on the presidential campaigns of John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2008.

“I believe pretty deeply we need to bring people back to Washington who want to work and get things done,” Gottheimer said. “Like most people, I’m frustrated with the extremism from the wings of the parties.”

Politico pointed out that "according to FEC filings, Gottheimer already has raised $150K from Wall Street execs including Tom Nides (MS), Peter Scher (JOM), Blair Effron (Centerview), Orin Kramer (Provident), Phil Murphy (ex-GS), Marc Lasry (Avenue) and Jake Siewert (Goldman)."

Bloomberg: "Representative Scott Garrett, who heads an influential House subcommittee overseeing the U.S. capital markets, is facing a revolt by corporate and Wall Street donors after he reportedly made anti-gay remarks at a private meeting of Republican lawmakers. ... Earlier this month, in what financial lobbyists said was a sign of things to come, the Big 4 accounting firms and their trade association abruptly canceled a fundraising event for the New Jersey Republican.

"In addition, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has decided to stop making political action committee donations to Garrett ... Other firms are likely to follow suit, and some in the industry have debated whether to take a more drastic step and ask for their contributions back from Garrett, said the people, who asked for anonymity so as to not antagonize a lawmaker who oversees their industry." Couldn't happen to a more deserving sociopath!

Meanwhile, other New Jersey Republicans, as usual, are embarrassed by Garrett's deranged extremism. Mainstream conservative Leonard Lance: "I am not going to criticize Scott Garrett because I do not know what he said,” said Lance. “I, however, disagree with anyone who rejects Ronald Reagan’s 'Big Tent' philosophy of an inclusive Republican Party. We should welcome into the Tent all people who believe in Republican ideals and principles of fiscal responsibility regardless of their race, religion, creed, national origin, gender or sexual identity. That has always been my position and will continue to be so."

Can Steve Israel Save Scott Garrett's Seat For Their Wall Street Masters Again?

New Jersey has 12 congressional seats and, largely due to skillful deals between craven Jersey political bosses, half are held by Democrats and half by Republicans. Seems odd in a state that didn't just give Obama a 58-41% win in 2012 and a 57% to 42% win in 2008 but had gone for Kerry and Gore against Bush and for Bill Clinton against both Bob Dole in 1996 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. Nevertheless, Boss Norcross has seen to it that the parties have come off with an equal number of seats. 

Of the 6 New Jersey Republicans, 5 could be classified as relatively mainstream conservatives: Frank LoBiondo, Tom McArthur, Christopher Smith, Leonard Lance, and Rodney Frelinghuysen. One, however, Scott Garrett, is a radical right ideologue and extremist better suited to representing a crackpot district in exurban Texas or Oklahoma than one in northern and western New Jersey. Garrett is the most extreme Member of Congress in the Northeast and often finds himself alone voting against the direct interests of his own constituents while the other 11 New Jersey congressmembers (there's one woman) of both parties are voting for New Jersey interests.

Garrett may vote like a Confederate secessionist but there is never any doubt where his principal loyalty lies: Wall Street. A subcommittee chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Garrett has accepted more legalistic bribes from Wall Street than almost anyone else in the history of Congress-- $1,171,579 for the 2014 cycle alone, $1,223,813, for the 2012 cycle... the kind of money that only the criminally minded accept from the banksters while doing their bidding hidden away in a murky subcommittee.

Yesterday, local New Jersey media reported on a long-simmering feud between Garrett and his extremism and the more mainstream conservatism of the House Party leadership.

Rep. Scott Garrett told colleagues at a private House committee leadership meeting last week that he would not contribute to the political arm of the Republican caucus because it recruits and supports gay candidates, according to a report published Thursday by Politico.

The report, attributed to multiple sources in the room, said Garrett made the comments at a meeting of Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee. At the meeting, chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas said that subcommittee  chairmen are expected to pay “dues” to the National Republican Congressional Committee and side with House leadership on procedural votes.

Garrett, the chairman of the capital markets and government-sponsored enterprises subcommittee since 2011, has often broken with the leadership on procedural votes and even voted against re-electing Ohio Rep. John Boehner as speaker in January.

According to the Politico report, Garrett said that procedural votes should be a matter of conscience, and that he would not support the NRCC because of its support for gay candidates. Several members of the committee reacted angrily to his comment, according to the report, and said the committee did not back candidates in primaries or care about their sexual orientation.

Garrett’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Garrett is a founder of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of Republicans that often disagrees with Boehner’s team on the right approach to policy. Boehner began to crack down on members who bucked the leadership last month, and Politico reported at that time that Garrett had survived an effort to strip him of his chairmanship.

When asked last month by The Record if he would begin contributing to the NRCC, Garrett said, “I help out the team substantially by helping out other members.”

Politico’s story on Thursday said Garrett had agreed to the NRCC’s building fund and recount efforts, but not to the committee directly.

Garrett’s fund-raising increased dramatically after he became the chairman of a subcommittee that regulates Wall Street policy. A report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday showed Garrett had nearly $2.2 million in his account on June 30 after raising $224,000 during the second quarter of this year.

He may face his best-funded challenger ever, however, next year. Josh Gottheimer, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, raised $412,000 during the quarter and had $586,000 in his account on June 30.

Best-funded? OK, that's something... but the DCCC hasn't treated Garrett as a serious target, ever. He's been protected by another Wall Street crony, Steve Israel, who is likely to make sure Garrett is reelected once again, even if Israel wears a shiny Gottheimer lapel pin.

Volcker Rule: Each Ending Is A New Beginning For Banksters And Their Lobbyists

As we mentioned Monday, all but one Republican (Walter Jones) voted to exempt private equity fund investment advisers from regulatory registration and reporting requirements. They were joined by 36 Democrats led by Wall Street whores Steve Israel ("ex"-Blue Dog-$800,019) and Jim Himes (New Dem-$1,853,26). Ever since Boehner became Speaker, whittling away at Dodd-Frank has been top priority-- and he knows there are always a couple dozen corrupt Democrats to tag along for the goodies. Conservatives hate the Volcker Rule banning high-risk bank trades but it was something Boehner, the GOP and the ConservaDems weren't able to stop on Tuesday.

The Fed and the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp) each voted unanimously under guidelines set by Congress before Boehner took over. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkely was one of the most outspoken and effective advocates of the rule and his office released this statement by him and Carl Levin, a cosponsor of the provision during the crafting of Dodd-Frank:

“We fought for the Merkley-Levin provision of the Dodd-Frank Act in order to put a strong firewall between banks and hedge fund-style high-risk trading. Today is a big step toward that goal. We are still reviewing the details of the final rule, but early indications suggest that persistence and common sense can prevail in the face of even the fiercest special interest lobbying campaigns: hedging looks tougher, market-making looks simpler, trader compensation remains appropriately structured, and CEOs are required to set the tone at the top. No regulation is ever perfect, and we will carefully monitor implementation and hold regulators and firms accountable. If problems emerge-- for whatever reason-- we will quickly press regulators to address them. Overall, though, the final rule looks improved over the proposal from two years earlier.

“The Merkley-Levin Amendment was intended to change the culture and practices at our nation’s largest financial firms, to prevent Wall Street and the big banks from making swing-for-the-fences bets that put depositors and taxpayers at risk. The regulators have taken a serious step forward in mandating critical changes.”

Hedge-fund style proprietary trading at our nation’s largest financial firms was a high-risk, conflict-ridden activity that played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. Banks should be in the business of serving customers-- including taking deposits from and making loans to ordinary families and businesses. Speculative investing should be left to hedge funds, private equity funds, and other private investors that, if they get in trouble, won’t imperil the lending so critical to our economic growth.

The Volcker Rule firewall, as embodied in the Merkley-Levin Amendment to Dodd-Frank:

• Bars our lending banks and their affiliates and subsidiaries from engaging in the speculative, conflict-ridden activities of making bets on the stock, bond, derivatives, and other markets and limits those activities at systemically important nonbank financial institutions;
• Allows for customer-oriented services, such as underwriting and market-making to facilitate capital formation for clients, risk-mitigating hedging activities to permit safe and sound operations, and fund management services for customers.

Wall Street is not happy. They fought the Volcker Rule at every opportunity and spent millions bribing (legalistically bribing, I guess) Members of Congress to kill it. It didn't work and they and their allies are fuming this week

Regulators' tough stance heralds a new era and new approach for financial markets, CLSA banking analyst Mike Mayo said.

"The big picture is that this ushers in an era of Big Brother banking," with regulators closely monitoring details of top banks' risk-taking, Mayo said. "Big Brother was asleep on the couch before the financial crisis." The new policy reflects Congress' decision that the banking system needed to be "de-risked, de-leveraged and to deliver more consistent financial results," he said. As part of the same overall effort, bank regulators are boosting capital requirements for banks internationally.

…The biggest arguments recently have been about how much trading should be allowed to hedge positions, especially since banks typically have more deposits on hand than they have loans outstanding, with the rest of their assets usually invested in the markets. They also typically own securities as part of legal activities such as executing client trades and making markets, he said.

Liberal-leaning groups such as Better Markets have lobbied for the toughest version of the rule possible, arguing in a Nov. 21 letter to the agencies that allowing too much trading to let banks hedge risks will allow proprietary trading via loopholes. They pointed to JPMorgan Chase's $6 billion-plus loss in the "London Whale" derivatives trade as evidence that trading that banks say is simply a hedge can pose risks to the system. New rules would hurt access to credit far less than another crisis, they said.

"Wall Street and its lawyers are in the loophole creation-and-exploitation business," Better Markets' Dennis Kelleher said. "For 100 years, banks have made the same complaints about every regulation. They said it during the Depression, and we grew the biggest middle class in the history of the world."

President Obama's statement:

Five years ago, a financial catastrophe on Wall Street was rapidly fueling a punishing recession on Main Street that ultimately cost millions of jobs and hurt families across the country. So as we prepared steps to rescue our economy and put Americans back to work, we also put in place tough rules of the road to make sure a crisis like that never happened again-- rules that reward sound financial practices, allow honest innovation and strengthen the financial system’s ability to support job creation and durable economic growth.

As part of this Wall Street reform, we fought to include the Volcker Rule-- a rule that makes sure big banks can’t make risky bets with their customer’s deposits. The Volcker Rule will make it illegal for firms to use government-insured money to make speculative bets that threaten the entire financial system, and demand a new era of accountability from CEOs who must sign off on their firm’s practices.

Our financial system will be safer and the American people are more secure because we fought to include this protection in the law. I thank Paul Volcker, a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and advisor I trust, for helping to create this important safeguard. I also thank Secretary Lew and the regulators who worked diligently to finalize the rule by the end of this year as we called on them to do. I encourage Congress to give these regulators adequate funding to effectively and efficiently implement the rule, which will help protect hardworking families and business owners from future crisis, and restore everyone’s certainty and confidence in America’s dynamic financial system.

One of the biggest Wall Street whores in Congress is New Jersey extremist Scott Garrett, Wall Street's fully-owned Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. While sitting on the committee, he's taken a tidy $1,235,537 in bribes from the financial services industry. So far this year, he's the 4th biggest recipient of bribes from securities and investment area, beaten out only by Boehner, Cantor and Tom Cotten (R-AR), another corrupt member of the Financial Services Committee and a candidate for the U.S. Senate. He ran right to Fox Tuesday to whine about the rule:

Who Does Wall Street Own In Congress?

The Grayson Takano No Cuts letter is the gold standard

The House doesn't usually stay in sessions Fridays, let alone take serious votes, but this past Friday, as we mentioned yesterday, Boehner and Cantor kept the Members in town to repay a promise they had made to their Wall Street masters to further weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. A bill Wall Street lobbyists wrote with one of their most pathetic congressional shills, Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-- and co-sponsored by 23 other bankster asswipes (20 of them members of the House Financial Services Committee who brazenly take large legalistic bribes from Wall Street firms they're supposed to oversee on behalf of the American people) came up for a vote. The bill to weaken Dodd-Frank passed 235-161.

Here's a list of the House Financial Services Committee members who co-sponsored the bill (+ Boehner and Cantor) with the bribes they took from Wall Street banksters last cycle, strongly pointing to an illegal quid pro quo:

• John Boehner (R-OH)- $1,415,075
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $902,400
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $537,020
• Michele Bachmann (R-MN)- $79,024
• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- $286,677
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- 0
• John Campbell (R-CA)- $79,750
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)- 0
• Stephen Fincher (R-TN)- $55,650
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-Mafia)- $209,732
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $51,800
• Randy Hultgren (R-IL)- $136,500
• Robert Hurt (R-VA)- $127,000
• Peter King (R-NY)- $128,950
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $80,000
• Gary Miller (R-CA)- $32,750
• Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)- $500
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $125,500
• Stevan Pearce (R-NM)- $19,950
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)- 0
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $18,200
• Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)- $15,250
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- 0

Don't worry about the 4 Republicans with zero dollars from Wall Street. They're freshmen and weren't doing errands for the banksters in 2012, the way they are now. Next year, each will get thousands of dollars from Wall Street. As economist Dean Baker explained last week in Cutting Social Security and Not Taxing Wall Street, "Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security." Like many of us, Baker is frustrated that Obama isn't fighting the Wall Street/GOP approach... and perhaps even embracing it.

As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.

Most people are now familiar with President's Obama's proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.

Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.

While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration is unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.

If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn't. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades.

The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than three centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world.

There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window.

A second bill has been put forward by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio. This bill would apply a 0.03 percent tax to trades of stock and a wide range of other financial assets. According to the Joint Tax Committee, the bill would raise close to $40 billion a year or over $400 billion over a ten-year budget window once it is implemented.

Unfortunately the administration has consistently opposed both bills. It claims that it is concerned about the incidence of these taxes-- that ordinary investors would see large burdens from the tax. It also claims to be worried that the taxes will disrupt financial markets by making trading more costly.

Neither of these stories passes the laugh test. Ordinary investors don't trade much, and therefore are not going to feel much impact from the tax. If someone with $100,000 in a 401(k) (this is much larger than the typical 401(k)) turns it over at the rate of 50 percent annually, they would pay $15.00 each year as a result of the Harkin-DeFazio tax.

Furthermore research shows that investors reduce their trading as costs increase. This means that if the tax increases trading costs by 20 percent, then investors will reduce their trading by roughly the same amount (in this example, turnover would fall to 40 percent annually). That means that the net cost of turnover in a 401(k) will barely change for a typical investor as a result of the tax. Wall Street would just see much less business.

So the Obama administration wants us to believe that it is willing to cut the Social Security benefits of retiree living on $15,000 a year in Social Security by $450 but it opposes a Wall Street speculation tax because it is concerned that investors with $100,000 in a 401(k) may pay a few dollars a year in additional trading costs. Only a reporter with the Washington Post would believe a story like that.

The other part of the Obama administration's story is equally laughable. The cost of financial transactions has plummeted in the last four decades because of computers. Even the Ellison tax rate would just raise costs back to their mid-'80s level. The Harkin-DeFazio tax rate would probably still leave costs lower than they were in 2000.

The country certainly had a vibrant capital market and stock exchange in the 1980s, taking costs part of the way back to this level will not prevent Wall Street from serving its proper role of transferring capital from savers to borrowers. It will just clamp down on speculation.

The basic story is very simple. Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security. That is why President Obama is working to protect the former and cut benefits for the latter.

David Cicilline, a co-signer of the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter to Obama, proposed a congressional resolution that isn't as strong and definitive, and (therefore) has attracted more support in the House:

Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost-of-living-adjustments for Social Security Benefits

Whereas the Social Security program was established more than 77 years ago and has provided economic security to generations of Americans through benefits earned based on contributions made over a worker's lifetime;

Whereas the Social Security program continues to provide modest benefits - averaging approximately $14,000 per year-- to more than 53,000,000 individuals, including 37,000,000 retired workers in February 2013;

Whereas the Social Security program has no borrowing authority, has accumulated assets of $2,700,000,000,000, and, therefore, does not contribute to the Federal budget deficit;

Whereas the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund projects that such Trust Fund an pay full benefits through 2032;

Whereas the Social Security program is designed to ensure that benefits keep pace with inflation through cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that are based upon the measured changes in prices of goods and services purchased by consumers, currently the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics;

Whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a supplemental measure of inflation, the Chained Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U), or "Chained CPI," which adjusts for projected changes in consumer behavior resulting from price fluctuations known as the "substitution effect," which occurs when consumers buy more goods and services whose prices are rising slower than average and less of those rising faster than average;

Whereas studies indicate typical Social Security beneficiaries spend significantly greater shares of their budget than consumers generally on health care, prices for which have increased at higher than average rates, and health care may not easily be substituted by consumers such as seniors;

Whereas the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce Social Security benefits by .25 percent per year as compared to current policy, resulting in a reduction in outlays of $112,000,000,000 over the first decade;

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits from using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would continue to compound over time, and the AARP Public Policy Institute estimates that such reductions would grow to 3 percent after 10 years and 8.5 percent after 30 years;

Whereas Social Security Works estimates that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce annual Social Security benefits of the average earner - who is making $43,518-- by $658 at age 75, $1,147 at age 85, and $1,622 at age 95; and

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits would harm some of our most vulnerable populations: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits.

So far over 90 Democrats have signed on, spanning the ideological divide inside the congressional caucus from extreme right-wingers like Ron Barber (AZ) and Kirkpatrick (AZ), who are always looking for opportunities to tell their constituents they're against Obama, to normal liberal Democrats like Jan Schakowsky (IL), Judy Chu (CA) and Donna Edwards (MD) who prefer to support Obama. Here's the list of Democrats urging Obama to untangle himself from another Republican assault on American working families:

Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ)
Karen Bass (D-CA)
Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
Robert Brady (D-PA)
Bruce Braley (D-IA)
Corrine Brown (D-FL)
Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
Judy Chu (D-CA)
Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
Lacy Clay (D-MO)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Joe Courtney (New Dem-CT)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Ted Deutch (D-FL)
Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Bill Enyart (D-IL)
Lois Frankel (D-FL)
Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
John Garamendi (D-CA)
Alan Grayson (D-FL)
Gene Green (D-TX)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
Janice Hahn (D-CA)
Colleen Hanabusa (New Dem-HI)
Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
Brian Higgins (D-NY)
Rush Holt (New Dem-NJ)
Mike Honda (D-CA)
Jared Huffman (D-CA)
Shiela Jackson Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Bill Keating (D-MA)
Dan Kildee (D-MI)
Ann Kirpatrick (AZ)
Jim Langevin (D-RI)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
Ed Markey (D-MA) Doris Matsui (D-CA)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Mike Michaud (Blue Dog-ME)
Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Grace Napolitano (D-CA)
Richard Nolan (D-MN)
Ed Pastor (D-AZ)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Gary Peters (New Dem-MI)
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
Nick Rahall (D-WV)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
Bobby Rush (D-IL)
Tim Ryan (D-OH)
John Sarbanes (D-MD)
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Bobby Scott (D-VA)
José Serrano (D-NY)
Carol Shea Porter (D-NH)
Albio Sires (D-NJ)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Mark Takano (D-CA)
BennieThompson (D-MS)
Dina Titus (D-NV)
Paul Tonko (D-NY)
Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA)
Mark Veasey (D-TX)
Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Peter Welch (D-VT)
Frederica Wilson (D-FL)