I finally got around to emailing our errant, erstwhile Democratic Congressman, John Delaney.
Message Subject: Why did you betray us by voting for Republican bills to weaken Dodd-Frank and the ACA?
Jump below the orange n-dimensional ampersand to read the whole tirade...
Message Subject: Why did you betray us by voting for Republican bills to weaken Dodd-Frank and the ACA
Message Text:
I am frankly disgusted to see that you were one of only 35 Democrats to vote for the ludicrously entitled "Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act" which weakens Dodd-Frank and sets us up to bail out big banks yet again for gambling with our money. As Keith Ellison so eloquently put it, this bill:
1.Weakens the Volcker Rule. This bill undercuts an important part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Volcker Rule was intended to prevent deposit-taking banks from making bets using taxpayer insured funds. Even though the Federal Reserve went out of its way to ease the transition to a safer system, this bill would give mega-banks another two years to sell off certain securities in which they retain ownership rights. And this provision, which almost certainly juices the profits of the mega-banks like Citigroup and JP Morgan, has never been vetted. The public has not even had a day to review this text. How are we supposed to vote on this? It’s wrong that bills that help Wall Street and multi-national corporations get fast-tracked on day 2 while bills that help working families have been slow-walked for years. Just last month, Republicans successfully handed Citigroup and the other mega-banks a multi-billion dollar gift by repealing another reform measure known as “Swaps Push-Out,” which was intended to prevent another Great Recession. The repeal of that provision allowed the mega banks continue to borrow from the Federal Reserve lending window – currently at about zero percent interest -- to finance their risky derivatives trading.
2. Weakens Derivatives Provisions. This bill also includes three other provisions that weaken the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by taking away authority from the regulators charged with ensuring that everyone plays by the same rules. So, if at some point in the future we find out that our financial system is threatened, our regulators will be unable to take decisive action to fix the problem as they can do today. After witnessing the effect that one type of derivative, the credit default swap, had in spreading the losses from the subprime mortgage market around the world, I’d like to know why our first order of business this Congress is to roll back financial reforms that this Congress deliberatively passed over an 18-month period following the 2008 Financial Crisis.
3. Undermines investor protections. The bill includes three provisions that have the potential to leave investors worse off than they are today. In one instance, the bill exempts individuals that would broker a merger of a privately-owned company to be exempt from SEC registration. Since this legislation passed in the previous Congress, the SEC took actions making it unnecessary. However, if we pass the bill today, we will undermine a few basic investor protections the SEC retained. For example, the SEC determined that bad actors, such as convicted securities fraudsters, should not be able to take advantage of the carve-out. However, by voting yes, you are saying that it is ok for people convicted of fraud to sell other things – like franchises or the restaurant down the street. Another provision would allow 75% of all public companies to no longer report their financial statements in computer-readable formats. When everything is online today, and investors rely on computers to crunch the financials of various companies, this bill comes across as a huge step backwards. Ironically, my colleagues on the other side seem to forget that our capital markets only function as well as they do because investors understand the companies they are investing in. Even Republican Congressman Darrell Issa has pressed the SEC to do more on this issue to make company data more investor-friendly – this bill take the opposite approach, and undoes much of the progress the SEC has made. Why would we risk intentionally harming both small companies and investors this way? If much of this bill reads as if we never had a financial crisis, Title Eleven reads like we never had an ENRON or Worldcom. I am all for private companies compensating their employees with company securities but not if basic financial disclosure documents are not provided. This provision provides up to $10 million in company securities without having to provide the employees certain basic financial disclosures about the company. That’s right, this bill raises the maximum compensation from $5 million to $10 million – which will increase with inflation -- without requiring basic financial disclosures to the employees. Those benefits should be tangible and real and not subject to any accounting shenanigans. We all remember ENRON where employees were pressured to buy stock options that were completely worthless. Why can’t we enable employees to receive some equity in the company for which they work AND ensure workers get accurate financial disclosure forms? Republicans have brought this complex, eleven-bill package to the floor under suspension of the Rules, denying members the opportunity to offer amendments and have a robust fair debate. Just last month, that strategy led to the repeal of the “swaps push-out” rule, a crucial reform in Dodd-Frank. As this bill makes clear, the Republican strategy of jamming complex legislation through Congress will only continue, depriving the minority and the American public of the chance to provide meaningful input during the legislative process and threatening the provisions we put in place to protect our economy from another devastating financial crisis."
If this were not bad enough, I am equally disgusted to see that you were one of only 12 Democrats to vote for the deceptively titled Save American Workers Act of 2015, which raises the threshold for full-time employment from 30 hours per week to 40 hours per week. This change, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would increase the number of uninsured by up to 500,000 and increase budget deficits by $18.1 billion over the 2015-2020 period and by $53.2 billion over the 2015-2025 period.
So I voted for you against your clown-car Republican opponent. But I might as well have voted for him, since he would have voted against my interests and the interests of the overwhelming majority of the district, just the way you did. I had suspicions about you because of your background in finance, and unfortunately you have started to confirm them. Once is a data point, twice is a trend line. At this point you already deserve to be primaried by someone who will actually represent the district. At this point I would certainly vote for them. You apparently failed to learned the lesson -- just like Mark Warner -- that in a race between a faux Republican such as yourself or Mr Warner, and the real thing, the real thing will generally win, because the Democratic base will not come out and vote for you. You keep this up and you will be gone, gone, gone.
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