A New High in Bipartisan Blatant Corruption

 H.R. 992, “The Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act” passed the house yesterday.  The bill is sponsored by our Rep. Randy Hultgren and co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) and others.  According to OpenSecrets.org, Representative Hultgren received over $396,000 from the securities, investment and commercial banking industries since 2010.  They are his largest campaign funders.  Himes is a former Goldman Sachs executive and chief fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.   This bill was mostly written by the lobbyists from the Wall St Banks…75 of 85 lines came verbatim from Citigroup lobbyist documents according to the NY Times.   

HR 992 attempts to repeal the provisions of the Dodd Frank Law passed in 2010 that would prevent bank holding companies from trading high risk derivative’s within their FDIC insured bank subsidiaries to prevent another meltdown and too big to fail bank bailout like the one that crashed our economy in 2008.   

What really makes the corruption around HR 992 so awesome is that it passed with bipartisan support, including the support of many of our local democratic Reps such as Bill Foster and Tammy Duckworth.  According to the NY times, the excuse of the supporting Dems is that there was enough Republican support to pass the bill, so why not support it and collect a fair share of Wall St. campaign contribution money.   Maplight’s data shows that members of the House received $22 million from interest groups that support the bill, 6 times more than they received from interest groups opposed.  The contest for the title of “Most Corrupt” is not over however.  Let’s see who in the Dem controlled Senate will rollover for the Wall St cash.