Congress has written the bribery laws in such a way as to exclude their own habitual behavior of taking corporate bribes. There are many examples but one that always stands out is how members of congress relate to the predatory payday lenders whose business model is ripping off the public Congress is supposed to be protecting. Instead, the biggest recipients of payday lender bribes-- especially Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Steve Stivers (R-OH), Grefgory Meeks (New Dem-NY), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) and Debbie #DebtTrapDebbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)-- have worked tirelessly to enable the payday lenders who were ripping off their own constituents. The payday lenders have handed out $10,081,111 in bribes to members of Congress since 1990, most of it ($7,341,549) to corrupt Republicans. But corrupt Democrats, primarily from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party have taken $4,630,982 and helped make this criminal enterprise look like it was bipartisan support, further muddying the Democratic brand and making Democrats look more like crooked Republicans. Here's a list of the 13 most corrupt current members of the House taking the biggest tit-for-tat bribes from the payday lender industry:
• Kevin Yoder (R-KS)- $278,709• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $228,400• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $218,499• Lynn Jenkins (R-KS)- $165,300• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $157,050• Alcee Hastings (D-FL)- $148,450• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $139,075• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- $138,000• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $132,599• Patrick Tiberi (R-OH)- $104,250• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $99,500• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- $87,130• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)- $83,100
The most dangerous of the payday lender whores in Congress right now is Jeb Hensarling, the banksters' designated hitter to destroy Dodd-Frank and especially the CFPB. Overall, Hensarling has gobbled up $7,372,690 from the Finance Sector. The only current member of the House who has taken more bribes from the sector is Paul Ryan, clocking in at $9,354,992. Last year alone, Hensarling took $1,283,695 from the banksters. Why do they like him so much? Easy: he's not just a true believer in corruption, he's the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Hensarling represents a gerrymandered R+17 district that shoots south and east from East Dallas (White Rock Lake Park and Mesquite) all the way down through Athens, Jacksonville and Palestine to Wells. Trump won this backward poorly-educated district 62.7% to 34.3% and the people there are delighted to have someone like Hensarling represent them.Last week CNN reported that his bill to repeal Dodd-Frank and replace it with something the bank lobbyists wrote, the Financial Choice Act, is moving along rapidly in Congress.
One political hurdle facing Republicans are efforts to overhaul the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is unlikely to win Democratic support. Another contentious issue up for debate is whether to keep a cap on credit card fees.
It's likely that Senate Democrats will block at least some of the worst aspects of Hensarling's bill, which is being championed by Trump's Goldman Sachs Swamp Contingent. AP reported that Hensarling and the other bribe-taking crooks on the House Financial Services Committee-- Congress' most corrupt entity-- are "emboldened by a business-friendly president... [and] are moving to unwind the stricter regulations that took effect after the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession," defanging the tighter rules.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank law was enacted by Democrats and President Barack Obama to respond to the crisis, putting the stiffest restrictions on banks and Wall Street since the 1930s Depression. It clamped down on banking practices and expanded consumer protections to restrain reckless conduct by financial firms and prevent a repeat of the 2008 meltdown.The sweeping legislation rolled out by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who is Dodd-Frank's fiercest foe and heads the House Financial Services Committee, would deliver a body blow to the financial law."Supporters of Dodd-Frank promised it would lift the economy, end bailouts and protect consumers," Hensarling said in a statement. "Yet Americans have suffered through the worst recovery in 70 years, Dodd-Frank guarantees future bailouts for Wall Street, and consumers are paying more and have fewer choices."Only a few weeks in office, President Donald Trump launched his attack on the financial law, ordering up a government review of the complex legislation that has been filled out with hundreds of rules written by regulators in a six-year slog. Trump says the restrictions on banks have crimped lending, the economy and job creation."We're going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank," he promised in late January.While the review due in June could provide a blueprint, it will take legislation to make a wholesale revamp of the law.Wielding a heavy knife, Hensarling's bill calls for repealing about 40 provisions of Dodd-Frank. It goes to the heart of the law's restrictions on banks. First, there's a new trade-off: Banks could qualify for most of the regulatory relief in the bill so long as they meet a strict basic requirement for the capital they build to cover unexpected big losses.Federal regulators would lose the power to dismantle a failing financial firm and sell off the pieces if they decide its collapse could endanger the system. To be repealed: the Volcker Rule, which bars the biggest banks from trading for their own profit. The idea behind it was to prevent high-risk trading bets that could implode at taxpayer expense.The legislation paints a bull's eye on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The five-year-old agency is a prime target for Republicans, who have long accused it of regulatory overreach. While it enforces consumer-protection laws, the CFPB also gained powers under Dodd-Frank to scrutinize the practices of virtually any business selling financial products and services: credit card companies, payday lenders, mortgage servicers, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, auto lenders, money-transfer agents.Hensarling's bill would eliminate those powers. And it would allow the U.S. president to remove the CFPB director at will, without needing a specific cause for firing. That's the subject of a battle currently in federal court. Meanwhile, Hensarling and other Republicans have called on Trump to immediately fire CFPB Director Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee, in what has become a nasty partisan brawl.The CFPB would be renamed the Consumer Law Enforcement Agency. No longer would its funding come from the Federal Reserve; the CFPB would have to depend on Congress to dole out the money as most federal agencies do. It would lose its authority to write rules or take enforcement action on payday loans.The targeting of the CFPB especially rankles Democrats and consumer advocates. The agency carried out an ambitious program of investigations across the spectrum of financial products, wrote new rules for mortgage lending and opened a vast new database for consumers to lodge specific complaints against financial companies. As a result of its enforcement actions, the CFPB says it has recovered $11.7 billion that it returned to more than 27 million consumers harmed by illegal practices."This reckless piece of legislation makes the wrong choice for consumers and the economy, while Wall Street and predatory lenders cheer," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group.Among other changes to Dodd-Frank that the bill, called the Financial Choice Act, would make:• Repeal the Federal Reserve's authority to set a cap on how much banks can charge businesses for handling debit card transactions, known as "swipe fees." The Fed set the cap at an average of about 24 cents per debit-card transaction. Prior to the cap, fees averaged 44 cents per swipe.• The Fed also would lose its power to supervise and set rules for non-bank financial firms.• The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of top federal regulators, would be stripped of its authority to label certain non-bank financial firms as potential threats to the system because their collapse could threaten the economy.
The House is hopeless but it will be instructive to see how far bankster-friendly Democratic senators-- the worst being Schumer himself, but also crooks like Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Mark Warner (VA), Robert Menendez (NJ) and Michael Bennet (CO)-- allow Hensarling's bill to go when it gets to the Senate.
