There's a fascinating above the fold story about Schumer and the Street on the FP of today's NYT. It describes in detail how the outgoing DSCC chair became a virtual bagman for Big Finance.
According to our paper of record:
Mr. Schumer led the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the last four years, raising a record $240 million while increasing donations from Wall Street by 50 percent. That money helped the Democrats gain power in Congress, elevated Mr. Schumer’s standing in his party and increased the industry’s clout in the capital.
As the article makes clear, Wall Street's investment in Schumer clearly has paid off:
Mr. Schumer, a member of the Banking and Finance Committees, repeatedly took other steps to protect industry players from government oversight and tougher rules, a review of his record shows. Over the years, he has also helped save financial institutions billions of dollars in higher taxes or fees.
He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies, for example, sponsored legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, pushed to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and called for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent.
"Since the financial meltdown, people have been asking, ‘Where was Congress? Why didn’t they see this coming? Why didn’t they provide better oversight?’ " said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "And the answer for some, including Senator Schumer, is that they were actually too busy pursuing a deregulatory agenda. Their focus was on how we have to lighten up regulation on Wall Street."
While the GOP clearly holds most of the responsibility for the ongoing financial meltdown, there are bipartisan elements to this tragic saga. One of the major Dem characters in this saga has been the senior senator from NY. While this site broadly agrees that Harry Reid should not be ML, he is far from the only problem w/ the Senate Dems. As the article notes:
In the last two-year election cycle, he helped raise more than $120 million for the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee, drawing nearly four times as much money from Wall Street as the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Donors often mention his "pro-business message" and record of addressing their concerns. John A. Kanas, the former chief executive of North Fork Bank, said: "He would solicit my opinion, listen to my advice and he appeared to take it into consideration."
Think about that graf for a moment. This site's leading purpose is to wean the Dems away from loyalty to fat cats and to build a small donor campaign finance base. The DSCC, however, raised nearly 4 times as much from the Street as the RSCC did in the last cycle. Is there any remaining doubt, accordingly, as to why the Senate Dems have let us down on so many occasions?
This article raises serious questions that we all need to ponder.