“Citigroup Becomes Its Own Self-Serving Lawmaker”: 21st Century Civics Lesson; How A Corporate Bill Becomes A Law
Congress, which has long been so tied up in a partisan knot by right-wing extremists that it has been unable to move, suddenly sprang loose at the end of the year and put on a phenomenal show of acrobatic lawmaking.
In one big, bipartisan spending bill, our legislative gymnasts pulled off a breathtaking, flat-footed backflip for Wall Street, and then set a dizzying new height record for the amount of money deep-pocketed donors can give to the two major political parties. It was the best scratch-my-back performance you never saw. You and I didn’t see it — because it happened in secret.
The favor was huge — allowing Wall Street’s most reckless speculators to have their losses on risky derivative deals insured by us taxpayers. Yes, such losses were a central cause of the 2008 financial crash and subsequent unholy bank bailout, which led to passage of the Dodd-Frank reform law, including a provision sparing taxpayers from covering future losses. But with one, compact, 85-line provision inserted deep inside the 1,600-page, trillion-dollar spending bill, Congress did a dazzling flip-flop on that regulation, putting us taxpayers back on the hook for the banksters’ high-risk speculation.
In this same spending bill, Congress also used its legislative athleticism to free rich donors (such as Wall Street bankers) from a limit of under $100,000 on the donation that any one of them can give to political parties. In a spectacular gravity-defying stunt, lawmakers flung the limit on these donations to a record-setting 15 times higher than before. So now bankers who are grateful to either party for being able to make a killing on taxpayer-backed deals can give $1.5 million each to the parties.
Perhaps you recall from your high school civics class that neat, one-page flow chart showing the perfectly logical, beautifully democratic process that Congress must go through to pass our laws.
What a bunch of kidders those chart makers were! To see how the sausage is really made, let’s take a look at that trillion-dollar budget bill that Congress squeezed out just before Christmas. It was crammed with special corporate favors, such as: reinstating a Bush rule allowing mining giants to explode the tops off ancient Appalachian mountains and then bulldoze the rubble down into the valley below, destroying pristine mountain streams; another letting long-haul trucking outfits require their drivers to be on the road more than 11 hours a day and up to 82 hours per week, filling our highways with highballing, sleep-deprived truckers; and cutting $60 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency, freeing up polluters to go unpunished for polluting.
None of these favors had anything to do with that “how a bill becomes law” flow chart in our civics textbook. No bill was filed, no public hearings, no debate, no vote. Just — BAM! — there they were, a thicket of benefits secretly slipped into the 1,600-page budget bill by … well, by whom? Largely by corporate lobbyists, though they get one of their for-hire congresscritters to do the actual dirty deed.
The taxpayer subsidy for Wall Street, for example, was written by Citigroup. The bank’s lobbyists then handed the provision to Kansas Republican Kevin Yoder, who slipped it into the bill. Thus, the Wall Street conglomerate that took a $50 billion bailout from us taxpayers just seven years ago to save itself from its own bad deals essentially was allowed to become an unelected, self-serving, do-it-yourself, backroom “lawmaker” to make sure that your and my tax dollars will be there to cover its next mess-up.
And that, boys and girls, is the real flow chart for making our laws. It’s always an amazing sight when Wall Street and Congress get together — especially when they get together out of sight.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, December 24, 2014
“So, Who’s Getting The Gigs?”: When The GOP Goes On A ‘Hiring Spree’
If you want to know where Congress is headed, it obviously makes sense to take a close look at elected lawmakers themselves. But to understand how they intend to get there, you’ll need to understand who they’re hiring.
As Republicans get ready to take complete control of Capitol Hill, GOP officials are going on a “hiring spree,” especially in the Senate, where the new majority will have expanded staffs at both the leadership and committee level.
So, who’s getting the gigs? We can break them down into two broad groups of people. The first, as Anna Palmer reported the other day, are corporate lobbyists.
Lobbyists can come home again.
As Republicans take control of Congress, they are bringing in veteran influence peddlers to help them run the show. Nearly a dozen veteran K Streeters have been named as top staffers to GOP leaders or on key committees as lawmakers prepare to take the gavel in January.
And why would lobbyists leave better-paying jobs at K Street firms in order to tackle unglamorous work on Capitol Hill? Because as any good lobbyist knows, they can, when they’re done with their congressional work, return to K Street and demand even more money.
In the meantime, the line between corporate lobbyists and congressional Republicans has long been blurry, but the partnership will now be even stronger as the GOP takes over the Senate for the first time in eight years.
But they’re not the only ones getting new gigs in Congress. The other group includes Heritage Action staffers.
Heritage Action for America is losing three staffers, including its top House lobbyist, to a trio of newbies in the 114th Congress. […]
“One of the great roles of having a permanent 300-person institution is that people take what they learn here and spread that throughout the universe,” said Heritage Action for America’s CEO Michael Needham.
Depending on one’s perspective, that’s either very nice or very scary.
Regardless, taken together, staffing moves like these tell us something interesting about who’ll be doing the legislative legwork for the next couple of years.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 22, 2014
“Rep Michael Grimm, Tax Evader”: The Felon Who Wouldn’t Leave Congress
Michael Grimm just got re-elected to Congress in November, so why should he resign over a minor detail like pleading guilty to a felony?
As first reported by the New York Daily News, the Staten Island Republican will plead guilty to one count of tax evasion in federal court on Tuesday afternoon. Grimm, who was indicted in April on 20 counts of fraud and tax evasion stemming from a health food store he once owned, is apparently going to try to keep his seat in Congress. While he said during his re-election campaign that he would resign if “unable to serve,” initial reports indicate the Republican congressman does not think his conviction should keep him from serving his constituents in New York’s 13th District.
The news that Grimm was set to plead guilty sent shockwaves through the leadership of the Republican Party on Staten Island. The two-term congressman cruised to re-election in November despite the ethical allegations swirling around him, besting former city council member Domenic Recchia by 12 points. Grimm had planned on regaining his Financial Services Committee membership, which he gave up under pressure when he was first indicted. Grimm has even been actively trying hire staff members for his office in recent weeks after several former aides deserted him.
Reached by phone after news of Grimm’s plea broke online, Guy Molinari, a longtime Island powerbroker and personal patron of Grimm’s, said he had not heard the news and declined to comment. The office of House Speaker John Boehner also declined to comment. John Antoniello, the chairman of the Staten Island Republican Party, said he had not been informed either but that the party continues to support Grimm.
Meanwhile, politicos were already trying to figure out their next play. Some Staten Islanders predicted that Boehner would only try to oust Grimm if he thought that the seat was likely to stay in Republican hands—a good prospect, many analysts suggested, considering Grimm’s easy win the last time.
The name that most Republicans seem both to expect and dread to consider running is Vito Fossella. The former congressman, a longtime fixture in Staten Island politics, stepped down when it was revealed after a drunk driving arrest that he had a second family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The Republican has frequently sparred with Grimm and thought about running in 2014, but it remains to be seen whether Fossella can withstand the scrutiny of another run, even in an era when scandal-scarred New York pols like Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer have come back to run again.
“Does he have the balls to run again after someone resigns over ethical issues?” asked one Staten Island Democrat.
Daniel Donovan, the well-regarded Staten Island district attorney who has come under criticism for failing to win an indictment in the Eric Garner case, is not widely thought to want to leave his post.
On the Democratic side, many expect former Rep. Mike McMahon to make another run at the seat. McMahon took over when Fossella resigned but was edged aside two years later by Grimm in the Tea Party wave election year of 2010.
Neither McMahon nor Fossella returned calls for comment.
In the meantime, Grimm faces no legal pressure to leave office. There is no requirement for a member of Congress to resign after pleading guilty to a felony. However, House Rule XXIII suggests that a representative who has been convicted of an offense that may result in at least two years’ imprisonment should “refrain from voting.” A report by the Congressional Research Service notes that members are “expected to abide” by this rule, even though it is technically advisory. Tax evasion carries a maximum penalty of five years, and thus it seems likely that Grimm would be covered by the provision. Tom Rust, a spokesman for the House Ethics Committee, declined to comment to The Daily Beast.
Grimm could be forced from office if he is expelled by a two-thirds vote of the House. The penalty is only rarely imposed, as members often resign before they can be voted out of Congress. Only two members of the House have been expelled since the Civil War, and no one has ever been expelled for a felony committed prior to serving in Congress. As the Congressional Research Service notes, an offense leading to expulsion “has historically involved either disloyalty to the United States or the violation of a criminal law involving the abuse of one’s official position, such as bribery.” Interestingly, if Grimm is expelled, he is not legally prohibited from running in the special election for his seat. And if he is re-elected, the House advisory rules prohibiting him from voting no longer apply.
Should Grimm choose to fight back under those circumstances, he would likely have an easy go of it on Staten Island, considering his clear win in November and the fact that he is pleading guilty to a lesser charge. “Voters knew about this and seemed not to care,” said Roy Moskowitz, a leading Democratic consultant on Staten Island.
Still, his conviction will restart a House Ethics Committee investigation into his actions. The bipartisan committee had originally started to probe Grimm in 2012 but had then deferred any action after a request by the Justice Department. Once Grimm has pleaded guilty, it is unlikely the Justice Department will have any qualms about the House Ethics Committee resuming its investigation. Further, the committee’s rules mandate that it “shall” begin an investigation as soon as a member of Congress is sentenced in federal court.
The conviction won’t be Grimm’s first brush with notoriety. The congressman has been investigated in the past for campaign finance irregularities involving an Israeli businessman who allegedly illegally funneled money to Grimm’s campaign. He also sparked controversy earlier in 2014 when he threatened a reporter on live television after President Obama’s State of the Union address by saying, “I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.”
By: Ben Jacobs and David Freedlandlander, The Daily Beast, December 22, 2014
“Peddling Even More Influence”: Blackwater Lobbyist Will Manage The House Intelligence Committee
After lobbyist-run SuperPACs and big money efforts dominated the last election, legislators are now appointing lobbyists to literally manage the day-to-day affairs of Congress. For the House Intelligence Committee, which oversees government intelligence operations and agencies, the changing of the guard means a lobbyist for Academi, the defense contractor formerly known as Blackwater, is now in charge.
Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA), the incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee when the House reconvenes in January, announced that Jeff Shockey will be the new Staff Director of the committee. As a paid representative of Academi, Shockey and his firm have earned $80,000 this year peddling influence on behalf of Academi.
In previous years, the House Intelligence Committee has investigated Blackwater over secret contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. As Staff Director, the highest position on a committee for a staff member, Shockey will oversee the agencies that do business with his former employer.
Shockey also represents a number of other companies with business before defense agencies: General Dynamics, Koch Industries, Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance, Innovative Defense Technologies and Boeing.
The role reversal, for lobbyists to take brief stints in Congress after an election, has become normalized. In a previous investigation for The Nation, we found that some corporate firms offer employment contracts with special bonuses for their staff to return to government jobs, ensuring the paycut they receive for passing through the revolving door to become public servants doesn’t have to alter their K Street lifestyle.
Other committees are also hiring lobbyists. Congessman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) replacement as chair of the Oversight Committee, just hired Podesta Group lobbyist Sean McLaughlin as his new Staff Director. McLaughlin’s client list includes the Business Roundtable, a trade association for corporate CEOs of large firms. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) also hired a new chief of staff, Mark Isakowitz, who represents BP.
By: Lee Fang, Public Report, December 19, 2014
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