Bought & Paid For Members Of Congress Weakened Financial Reform

1:34 am EST July 15th, 2010 | Politics | 4 Comments

The only word to describe people who indulge in this sort of behavior has to be “whore.”

Joseph Crowley

The Office of Congressional Ethics has sent corporate donors and fund-raising hosts more than three dozen requests for documents involving eight members who solicited and took large contributions from financial institutions even as they were debating the landmark regulatory bill, according to lawyers involved in the inquiry.

The requests are focusing on a series of fund-raisers last December, in the days immediately before the House’s initial adoption of the sweeping overhaul, which could win final approval this week. Some of the fund-raising events took place the same days as crucial votes.

For example, on Dec. 10, one of the lawmakers under investigation, Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, left the Capitol during the House debate to attend a fund-raising event for him hosted by a lobbyist at her nearby Capitol Hill town house that featured financial firms, along with other donors. After collecting thousands of dollars in checks, Mr. Crowley returned to the floor of the House just in time to vote against a series of amendments that would have imposed tougher restrictions on Wall Street.

Not surprisingly, one of the top hits for Joe Crowley is as a DLC “New Dem Of The Week.”

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4 Responses to “Bought & Paid For Members Of Congress Weakened Financial Reform”

  1. jr says:
    July 15, 2010 at 1:46 am

    Public financing of campaigns would be nice

  2. SteveCo says:
    July 15, 2010 at 2:10 am

    Honestly, what’s the difference if I, after say, getting a DUI, approach the judge overseeing my case and offer him a few thousand dollars to help with his next appearance on the ballot? Would that be legal? Um, no, of course not… I’d be thrown in the poky for sure.

  3. SteveCo says:
    July 15, 2010 at 2:14 am

    Yes Jr, it sure would be… and it would be a hell of lot more entertaining that’s for sure. Finally, we’d have really smart people and really crazy people able to run without having to be “connected,” or filthy rich… would definitely broaden the playing field. Of course we still get crazy people under the current plutocratic system, only because they are consistently crazy for their corporate/theocratic masters.

  4. NCSenior says:
    July 15, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    Let’s put some of the blame where it belongs, with voters who are too lazy to vote or too lazy to do their homework before voting.