Tag Archives: Dodd-Frank

Don’t say I didn’t tell you that the Crapo bill was crap, Claire

17 Thursday May 2018

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Back in March I wrote that Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill was, in my humble opinion, possibly making a big mistake both policy-wise and PR-wise when she decided to throw her weight behind one of the GOP’s efforts to kill Dodd-Frank via the “thousand cuts” strategy. The bill was S. 2155, The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consmer Protection Act, a.k.a. the Crapo bill, so-called after its main sponsor. I wrote then that, in opposition to the analysis of most industry observers who looked at S. 2155:

Many of the red-state Democrats who support the bill, like McCaskill, purport to buy into the argument that Dodd-Frank needs to be revised to help suffering community banks that the law has, they assert, disadvantaged. However, as Rivlin and Antilla report, “A 2017 FDIC report shows that deposits in community banks have grown in each of the past six years. …

In The Intercept, financial writer David Dayen notes, however, that anticipation of the loosened regulatory environment that the Crapo bill will create is already beginning to have the negative effects its critics warned about – effects that are hurting rather than helping the small community banks that had Reps. Ann Wagner (R-2) and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) crying crocodile tears bemoaning their plight, while Democrat McCaskill plodded along the rhetorical trail these and other GOP financial industry minions blazed:

But banking industry analysts say the bill is already having the opposite effect, and its loosening of regulations on medium-sized banks is encouraging a rush of consolidation — all of which ends with an increasing number of community banks being swallowed up and closed down.

“We absolutely expect bank consolidation to accelerate,” Wells Fargo’s Mike Mayo told CNBC the day after the Senate passed the deregulation bill in March. The reason? Banks no longer face the prospect of stricter and more costly regulatory scrutiny as they grow. And regional banks in Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, and Wisconsin have already taken note before the bill has even passed into law, announcing buyouts of smaller rivals.

A gloating report by FJ Capital Management concludes that, thanks to this newly deregulated environment, “over the next 10 to 15 years, the consolidation trend will reduce the number of banking institutions from 5700 to around 2,000.”

So the effects of this legislation, pitched as a necessary step to protect small, often rural community banks, will instead intensify what FJ Capital describes as a 30 year merger trend that has not only diminished but, thanks to the Crapo bill, will continue to diminish the number of community banks. And don’t kid yourself: it will also help to destroy the relative financial stability that Dodd-Frank has ensured in the wake of the collapse of the almost totally deregulated banking environment of 2008. Too big to fail, here we come.

Remember this next time our red-state Democratic Senator struts her bipartisan cred – she may get a polling bump out of it, but real people will have to make do with the mess of pottage she ends up serving us. But, of course, as usual, do I need to say that  we should save our real disdain for the GOP lackeys who will tell us anything in their fight to take care of their rich cronies.

 

Has McCaskill chosen the wrong “bipartisan” issue?

11 Sunday Mar 2018

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At this still, admittedly, early date, Claire McCaskill, Missouri’s Democratic Senate incumbent, is running eight points, 44-52, behind wet-behind-the-ears AG Josh Hawley, who is probably her best known challenger from among the GOP primary lineup. How can this be, you ask? McCaskill’s got the money, she’s been working hard to make sure that out-state Missourian’s know that she understands rural “Missouri values,” trekking from one town hall to another, tacking carefully and skillfully to the center in an effort to cultivate those famous moderates we keep hearing about – although we rarely seem to see them nowadays.

But recent events leave me wondering if McCaskill’s might have honed in on the wrong issue in order to prove her non-partisan bona fides. I’m referring to her support for a Republican bill that would once again deregulate banks. As Garry Rivlin and Susan Antilla of The Intercept describe it:

… the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, […] represents the greatest threat to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law since its passage in 2010. The bill would relieve all but the country’s largest dozen banks of increased scrutiny and ease mortgage rules imposed after the financial crisis. It would undermine fair lending rules designed to counteract race discrimination and weaken the Volcker rule, which limits a bank’s ability to make speculative trades with federally insured deposits. …

In spite of the fact that bank earnings have continuously surged since 2010, proponents speciously insist that, due to the act, banks “are suffering and so, by extension, are consumers, businesses, and the economy at large.” Part and parcel of the GOP belief, reinforced by the Liar-in-Chief in the White House, that if you say it, it will be so, reality be dammed.

Many of the red-state Democrats who support the bill, like McCaskill, purport to buy into the argument that Dodd-Frank needs to be revised to help suffering community banks that the law has, they assert, disadvantaged. However, as Rivlin and Antilla report, “A 2017 FDIC report shows that deposits in community banks have grown in each of the past six years. Another report showed that 96 percent of the country’s 5,294 community banks were profitable, as of the third quarter of 2017.” If you’re interested in learning more about the problems with this legislation, including the effect on community banks, noted economist Jared Bernstein spells some of them out here in greater – but not too lengthy or ponderous -detail.

The issue for McCaskill, though, could go beyond pandering through bad policy, and might actually cost her politically. Consider, for example, the speculation that banking champion GOP Rep. Ann Wagner may be vulnerable this time around. It’s true that there are several reasons other than her dedication to fighting for the banks that so generously fund her that might leave her in a little shakier position than in the past. Her district has changed somewhat, she plays shy with her constituents in an effort to avoid controversy – and dim any potential sunlight on her priorities. There is, of course, also some indication that the hard-core Trumpies may not totally buy her Trump-MAGA conversion and are likely put off by her coy country club Republican aura.

But it’s equally true that there’s somewhat louder discussion than in past years about Wagner’s single-minded efforts to gut the financial rules, the fiduciary rule that protected investors from dishonest financial advisors in particular. People aren’t always as stupid as politicians think they are, particularly when it involves financial survival issues. And don’t forget, lots of Trump’s so-called populist voters were motivated by anger at Wall-street and the big banks – and there are those among them who are feeling a bit disillusioned right now.

McCaskill should take care – linking herself with folks like Ann Wagner and Blaine Luetkemeyer, big-time Missouri shills for the banking industry, might just prove to be the proverbial millstone that could harm more than it helps with contrary voters. Oh, and there’s always the damage the actual policy may do to all of us. Don’t any of these Democratic fools playing the bipartisan game remember 2008?

ADDENDUM: Kevin Drum points out that the Dodd-Frank roll-back will also gut provisions that prevent racial redlining, voicing his – and my dismay – that any Democrats – are you listening Senator McCaskill – are supporting this piece of drek.

Ann Wagner says her DNA makes her destroy citizen protections

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

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GOP Rep. Ann Wagner must have a fixation on The Wizard of Oz because she spends lots of time creating straw men – and like the straw man in the story, they are all equally brainless. Witness her comments justifying President Moron’s efforts to rescind climate and consumer friendly regulations enacted during the Obama years:

“Everyone pays for the cost of compliance by government overreach, and it was on steroids during the Obama administration,” said Wagner, who said that an aversion to government regulation had been in “my DNA” since she was 12 or 13 and she saw her father and mother have to replace a new sign in their carpet store because it was a few inches too wide.

My heart breaks. The sheer inconvenience of all that overreach. Just imagine having to get a new sign.

Of course, my heart also nearly broke when my husband and I finally faced up to the fact of my 84 year old mother-in-laws’ increasing dementia and took over her finances. Imagine our surprise when we examined investments sold to her by her long-time (small) bank and learned that not only was she being sold highly risky securities, but that they were being sold over and over (the technical term is “churned”), generating comfortable commissions for the financial “advisor.” That discovery was nothing, though, compared to the statement she had been given to sign asserting that she had sufficient expertise to understand the risks of the investments made in her name. Bear in mind that this was a woman who couldn’t understand her electric bill – and who insisted that the banker in question took good care of her investments because she, the banker, was a “vice-president” and such a friendly woman who appreciated my mother-n-law’s long history with the bank.

Ann Wagner worked hard to dismantle the fiduciary regulations promulgated during the Obama years that would have insured that this type of behavior was unthinkable. Of course, to hear her tell it, she was actually insuring that elderly investors could get financial advice – advisors might chose, she implies, to refuse to work with such folks if they can’t fleece them.

Wagner’s ecstatic about Trump’s efforts to neuter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – an agency that saved consumers billions over the past few years, but got under the skin of the big bankers for whom Wagner is the main Girl Friday in Congress. She’s been one of the most enthusiastic congressional cheerleaders for dismantling the Dodd-Frank bill that created the agency. I didn’t, however, hear anything from our gal in D.C. when my 401(k) lost half its value in 2008 – thanks to the unregulated shenanigans of those very bankers. Evidently her DNA doesn’t permit her to consider problems bigger than daddy’s store’s sign.

Then, of course, there are the regulations proposed by Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Rolling back rules that would lessen harmful emissions will, of course, have devastating effect on efforts to slow and mitigate climate change. But that’s long-range stuff. Republicans like Wagner don’t have any use for that type of long term thinking – there’s no money in it after all.

But let me tell you a story that has implications for short as well as long range issues if these rules are successfully weakened. Fifteen years ago, when I announced my upcoming move to St. Louis, a colleague told me to be sure, when we bought a house, to buy on the east side of the Mississippi or far out in the West County. The reason: pollution. He explained to me that St. Louis is located in the center of a bowl shaped area with higher ground east and west. Pollution tends to settle in the city and its near suburbs, especially in warm weather. This gentleman had formerly worked in St. Louis and sold his house to move further out into the western higher suburbs – he eventually left the St. Louis region altogether to take a lower paying job – after the birth of a child who suffered from cystic fibrosis. His family and their doctors believed that it was literally a matter of life and death for the child given the pollution levels in the city.

Somehow, when it comes to regulation, Rep. Wagner’s parents’ sign doesn’t seem nearly as dire as the respiratory plight of folks in St. Louis which has ranked high on the list of most-polluted cities for many years (although data was not available for the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2016 Report). Yet I’ve heard not a word of protest from Rep. Wagner as our intrepid President King Moron and his minion at the EPA, Scott Pruitt, try to undercut the Clean Power Plan.

Of course, there are probably some regulations that go too far. But shouldn’t our Congresspersons be going after those specific rules rather than than whole classes of rules that protect our health and financial well-being? Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill certainly seems to be able to hone in on real overreach when it happens without doing harm to regulations essential for our well-being:

… Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is trying to repeal a rule requiring a magician from Springfield, Mo., to register his rabbit with the federal government and to have a disaster evacuation plan for the bunny. “I am not against getting rid of regulations that make no sense and make businesses jump through hoops that aren’t necessary, […] But I am not going to let them dismantle the EPA. I am going to do everything I can to fight Scott Pruitt because they are nominating people (to administer federal environmental programs) that can’t cite one clear air regulation they agree with.”

So if Senator McCaskill is capable of making such critical distinctions, why can’t Rep. Wagner and her pals? Does she have to insult our intelligence by claiming that all regulations are equal?

Perhaps The Wizard of Oz does really give us the answer to what’s going on in the mind of Republicans like Wagner. Not only does it feature a brainless straw man, but he’s enabled by a heartless tin man and a cowardly lion. Kinda like Wagner’s Republican party under Trump: brainless, heartless and, most importantly, cowardly folks who jump when their donors crack the whip.

Chutzpah, thy name is Ann Wagner

03 Monday Oct 2016

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I signed up to get regular Email newsletters from Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) and the latest is a doozy. Wagner had the audacity to say this to say about the recent disclosure of massive malfeasance on the part of the banking giant, Wells Fargo:

Earlier this year, the LA Times reported that Wells Fargo Bank employees opened over 2 million accounts without permission, leaving more than 1,100 Missouri customers victim to fraud and theft. Last week I took Wells Fargo CEO, John Stumpf, to task on the immoral and potentially criminal actions of the bank. Placing your money and wealth in the custody of a bank like Wells Fargo is a sacred display of public trust. They have betrayed our trust and taken advantage of consumers in order to meet sales performance goals and fraudulently improve earnings and share prices. This is reprehensible and I will continue to protect you and hold them accountable for their shameful activity.

Give me a break! This is just too rich coming from Wagner who is so tightly wedged into Big Banking’s pocket that she’s in danger of expiring from lack of oxygen.

As I have noted in previous posts, Wagner has worked tirelessly to help dismantle the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) which it created. Significantly, it was the CFPB that was responsible for exposing the Wells Fargo chicanery. Yet Wagner has fought tooth and nail and has done everything in her power to weaken its ability to exercise oversight of the financial industry.

Wagner evidently thinks that scolding a bank executive at one of those PR dog-and-pony shows (think Benghazi, the Clinton emails non-scandal) that the GOP-dominated House of Representatives has become famous for constitutes holding banks “accountable” and “protecting” constituents. Or she’s just trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

And she may be succeeding. Wagner’s standing for reelection this November against Democrat Bill Otto and, sadly, Wagner, the well-established, well-financed friend of Big Banking is widely expected to prevail.

Wagner stands up for CHOICE to deregulate banks, kill Dodd-Frank

17 Saturday Sep 2016

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Today in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch I read an article about the override of the Governor’s veto of SB656 (the guns unlimited “constitutional” carry gun law). In order to underline the dangerous potential of the new law, Kevin Allbrand, an official with the Fraternal Order of Police, is quoted saying “this is not some type of banking regulation, this is public safety and law enforcement safety.”

Not some kind of banking regulation? What kind of fool thinks we can ignore what happens with our money and still live safe, happy lives? Guns kill, it’s true, but what legislators do about banking regulation affects many more lives than even horrible gun laws.

Remember the 2008 Bush recession? Poor regulatory choices created a crisis that nearly plunged us into a depression rivaling that of the 1930s, a very bad time for lots of people. I bring the recession up not just because it’s a good example of the harm perpetrated by regulatory negligence and financial malfeasance, but because a gaggle of House legislators are working hard to return financial regulation to the pre-2008 status quo ante that nearly cratered our economy.

And right up front of that gaggle, you’ll find Missouri’s Ann Wagner (R-2). She gets lots of money from the financial industry and does her best to represent their interests. If you’re concerned about your financial welfare, you should pay attention to her pro-banking, anti-consumer priorities

Wagner has been a persistent player in Republican efforts to deregulate the banking industry back to its pre-2008 status. Her efforts to derail Department of Labor (DOL) fiuciary rules have been incorporated into the The Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs (CHOICE) Act, a recent Republican effort to replace the Dodd-Frank Act which was enacted to protect Americans from the banking abuses typical before the Bush recession..

Wagner has persistently fought to strangle new DOL fiduciary rules that mandate that investment advisers privilege their clients interests over their own. Under the new rules, financial agents can no longer encourage clients to invest in inappropriate or sub-standard products which may kick back substantial fees to the advisor responsible for the sale. Wagner, and her generous banker clients, claim that if financial advisers can’t swindle their clients, they won’t reap enough of a profit to make advising small investors worthwhile. Only Wagner never uses the word “swindle.” See how it works?

Wagner has tried twice in the past few years to undo the new rules via direct legislation. Her Retail Investor Protection Act, H.R. 1090 – note the Bizarro World title – was aimed at incapacitating DOL rule-making ability in essentially the same way as her earlier effort, H.R. 2374. Both bills limped off to die elsewhere after passing out of the House. Apparently Wagner thinks the third time’s the charm since her zombie legislation is now back, incorporated into the CHOICE act.

The CHOICE Act, to be fair, contains many other problematic provisions apart from Wagner’s specific contributions. For example it proposes to repeal the Volcker Rule, and the Durbin amendment which limits fees for credit card transactions.

Notably, it would also cripple the GOP’s (and Wagner’s) special bête noire , the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CFPB) – the same agency that just fined Wells Fargo $185 million after exposing a scam wherein bank employees opened 2 million unauthorized, accounts for customers that fraudulently generated $1.5 million in fees for the bank – and earned bonuses and other incentives for the employees. Even before this coup, the CFPB had returned $11 billion to consumers who “were cheated on their mortgages, credit cards, checking accounts, and other financial products.” The CFPB is by any measure effective in pursuing its goals. Too effective for financial institutions used to running wild with our money.

It all just goes to show that when their financial industry clients howl, Wagner’s congressional clique gets to work to fix their ouchie. Voila the CHOICE Act. And if consumers bleed, so be it.

Why does the Missouri Tea Party support crony capitalism?

26 Sunday Jul 2015

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We don’t hear so much about the Tea Party these days, but it’s had a good run in Missouri, dominating the political narrative for a few years and managing to elect a slew of John Birch Society retreads who have joined forces with the rest of the GOP to work their backwards magic in Jefferson City. Although I would argue that many if not most of the Tea Party adherents were a bit confused about just what they stood for apart from the resentment occasioned by the first black president, some did talk the talk when it came to big banks and big money corruption in government. As recently as the last election, Virginia’s Tea Partying David Brat was able to defeat incipient GOP congressional star Eric Cantor in part by harping on big banks and the bailout.

Missouri’s Tea Party also vented about banks and bailouts. Nevertheless, when it came to selecting their representatives, Tea Partiers sent Wall Street’s dream team to Washington, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3). Both are charter members of what the Center for Public Integrity has dubbed the “Banking Caucus.” According to Alison Fitzgerald writing in Slate:

The group has been central to efforts […] to undo many of the financial reforms enacted in the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. At least 30 bills have been proposed to the House during the 113th Congress, aimed at chipping away at aspects of Dodd-Frank. Members of the banking caucus sponsored or co-sponsored 20 of those laws, […]

Wagner has done an especially enthusiastic job for Wall Street – most recently she got so worked up over a proposed Department of Labor rule that would require financial advisers to put their client’s welfare before their own bottom line that she proclaimed at a meeting of brokers and financial advisers that “we are at war.” And she quickly jumped into battle, introducing a bill, the Retail Investor Protection Act, to take the rule-writing ability away from the Labor Department and give it to the more easily swayed (by Wall Street) SEC.

In return, Wagner has been well paid by banking giants like Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer Funds and big insurance trade groups. Between 2011 when Wagner was first elected to office and 2014, she took in $776,511 from the financial industry. I’m willing to bet that when you add in this year’s take, well over a million dollars of the reported $1.88 million] she now has in the bank come from similar sources, making her the “most prolific money-raiser” among the members of Missouri’s congressional delegation.

Luetkemeyer, for his part, hasn’t been a slouch. Not only does he carry water for Wall Street, he’s a go-to guy for the sleazy payday lending industry. His Clear Relief Act, has been characterized as a “sweeping deregulation bill for community banks.”He has also proposed several bills intended to chip away at the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren’s brain-child, which was created under Dodd-Frank to protect consumers from the worst depredations of the financial industry. For these Herculean efforts he reaped $788,181 from the financial industry between 2010 and 2014.

While Wagner and Luetkemeyer are working hard for Wall Street, they clearly aren’t working for everyday Missourians or any of the millions of Americans hit hard by the financial crisis of 2008 – unequivocally the result of the type of wholesale deregulation our dynamic duo are now peddling. Nor do their priorities seem to line up with the rhetoric of the Tea Partiers who helped elect them.

Jeff Spross suggests that the solution to this seeming contradiction may lie in the relatively privileged status of many Tea Partiers:

Much of the American right’s understanding of economics and its relationship to government is characterized by a lack of desperation. The idea that questions of security or starvation, dignity or destitution, could trump the abstract principles of “how capitalism works,” is just absent. The Tea Party arguably views Wall Street not as manipulative overlords, but as competitors in the sport of capitalism. Richer and more powerful competitors, obviously. But competitors still. And while they don’t want their competitors getting unfairly bailed out by the referees, they don’t want the game to be changed, either.

It is for less fortunate and less privileged Americans that the game itself is the problem.

Essentially, crony capitalism doesn’t mean the same thing to Tea Partiers that it means to you and me. As David Weigel has observed, “the Tea Party, after all, is not wholly set against the GOP’s business class. It’s just the latest populist movement funded and fueled by the Big Business.”  He implies that the Tea Party has functioned as an unwitting front:

[…] What’s the business-friendly label that’s going to be more potent than the Tea Party? Every successful movement of economic conservatives has been led in public by the non-rich, from the anti-tax farms of the 1920s to the property-tax-hating suburbanites in the 1970s to the “family farmers” who are, we’re told, the real victims of the estate tax. How do you make Rove-ism or Goldman Sachs-ism as popular as the Tea Party is, even now?

 

Ann Wagner does Wall Street’s bidding and and asks Main Street to thank her for doing it

03 Sunday Nov 2013

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So we know Republicans hate Obamacare so much that they can’t shut up about it. But don’t let their nattering on this topic lead you to think that they don’t have a long list of other most-hated things. Foremost on that list is the Dodd-Frank Act that allows the government to regulate the financial industry in order to forestall another financial crisis such as that of 2008, as well as to protect consumers of financial services. However, hostile forrays against Dodd-Frank have to be handled delicately since, given the somewhat confused populist bent of at least a fraction of the Tea Party, none of these folks want to admit that they’ve done Wall Street a solid at the expense of Main Street. Enter smarmy, make-nice, Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2).

Wagner is the author of the latest manifestation of Republican disdain for Dodd-Frank, the misnamed Retail Investor Protection Act (H.R. 2374) which just passed the House. Wagner’s bill “tweaks” Dodd-Frank in such a way that it curtails the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Labor (DOL) to make rules that protect investors:

… the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, the Financial Planning Association and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors – said that it “views H.R. 2374 as a ‘back-door’ attempt to undermine investor protection provisions in Dodd-Frank and to prevent the SEC and DOL from proceeding with investor protection rulemakings consistent with appropriate cost-benefit analyses and routine interagency coordination.”

Dodd-Frank authorized the SEC to establish a uniform fiduciary standard of conduct for both broker-dealers and investment advisors, the coalition said, and the passage of H.R. 2374 “would substantially impede or completely prevent the SEC from proceeding with a congressionally authorized and long-needed rulemaking that would allow all investors to receive investment advice that is based on their best interests.

This proposed change has not only roused managers of 401(k) funds, but consumer advocates who are concerned that it could stop any regulation of investment brokers who have long been free to run amok. In addition to the groups mentioned above, others such as the Chair of the SEC, the AARP, the Investment Adviser Association, and the North American Security Administrators Association have also lobbied vociferously against the Wagner bill, asserting that it “imposes unnecessary and onerous rulemaking requirements that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must meet before it can adopt a fiduciary rule” which “not only unnecessarily slows DOL’s rulemaking, but […] potentially halts DOL’s rulemaking altogether if the SEC does not act on a fiduciary rule.”

The net result: H.R. 2374 would leave individual investors and the retirement funds of middle class Americans to the mercy of the sharks. Yet Wagner tries to present the passage of the bill as a victory for the little guy, claiming in an email to constituents that it will “preserve and increase lower and middle income Americans’ access to affordable investments.” Because, you know, in the wealthy Wagner’s country club world, regulation is known by everybody who matters to be bad. Quoted in Investment News:

Ms. Wagner said that the agencies’ “massive rule making” could raise regulatory costs and limit access to investment advice for people trying to save for retirement, college or a home.

In response to similar gibberish, Bob Clark of Think Advisor, an investment advisor magazine, replies:

Seriously? Is there really a question about whether retail investors are being harmed by what study after study has shown to be the nearly universal [and mistaken] belief that their broker has a legal obligation to act in their best interest? That the costs of acting in investors’ best interests really might somehow outweigh the benefits? Or the underlying implication that it would cost brokerage firms more to act in their clients’ best interests?

Fortunately, there are folks who remember 2008 and understand that regulation is necessary. President Obama has indicated that he will veto the Wagner bill if it makes it through the Senate – which is unlikely since the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee has said that he does not expect that the Committee will waste time on legislation destined to be vetoed.

Nevertheless, it’s not all good – 30 House Democrats voted for this gift to Wall Street, and and although that’s not a really strong bipartisan vote, it’s disheartening. And, of course, Ann Wagner is swanning around bragging about how she’s working hard for the little guy and holding this piece of drek up as evidence. As Clark noted in his article, it’s mortifying to learn that the securities industry lobby group SIFMA “could really get a Congresswoman, who tells us that ‘it’s the responsibility of Congress to intervene and stand up for hardworking American families’ to put her name on such a bill.”

Cross-posted to Daily Kos.