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Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) made it clear he would have preferred the agency not exist. He asked Cordray why the agency was not adhering to Obama's freeze on government hiring.
Cordray said the agency was new and needed to hire to get working. Cordray noted that if the agency had adhered to the freeze, it would still have zero employees instead of the approximately 757 it now has.
"I wouldn't object to you being at zero," Guinta said.
Source: "Consumer chief Richard Cordray promises not to abuse his power" By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2012.
Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, waits for the start of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing. (Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / January 24, 2012)
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"Frank's Book Club: Guinta reads to the financial sector"
NH Union Leader, Editorial, March 4, 2016
Who knew Frank Guinta was a book lover?
During his spare time in Washington, Guinta likes to get together with some of his favorite banking lobbyists and share his thoughts on literature.
Bloomberg Politics reports that Guinta last month received a boost from House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling, who hosts a monthly “Book Club” where donors can hear from committee Republicans. Guinta led the February talk on Arthur C. Brooks’ “The Conservative Heart.” For $2,000, lobbyists get lunch, a book and Hensarling’s good will. Skipping more than one of the monthly fundraisers reportedly knocks you into the doghouse.
Such tactics are neither new nor atypical. The book club goes back more than a decade, and committee chairs often use their clout to help less powerful members raise money. Neither Guinta nor Hensarling is doing anything illegal or unusual.
Financial industry lobbyists don’t care what Frank Guinta has to say about a book. They’re showing up to protect their access in the future.
Campaign finance reformers would ban such unsavory arrangements. That’s both unconstitutional and unnecessary. Shrinking government, and lessening the control that members of Congress have on our lives is the surest way to reduce money in politics.
In the short term, when Guinta files his next campaign finance report, we’ll get to see which lobbyists share his love of reading.
Reader's comment:
SPIKE said March 4, 2016:
As always, the problem is not that industry can "petition the government for redress of grievances," nor that the banking industry has more "greed" than it has always had, but that the federal government has amassed so many unconstitutional powers whose only point is sale to private interests--starting with a national central bank, price controls on the price of money itself, and permission to maximize profit by loaning out the same deposits multiple times on the theory that not everything will crash (except when everything crashes and we have to write a bail-out). Campaign finance reform and lobbyist reform will no more solve this problem than will Rand Paul's naive bill that we "force Congressmen to read every bill." People will do what is in their self-interest to do. The solution is to abolish these corrupt powers of government. Frank Guinta will no more do that than he will really work to repeal Obama-care (another excuse for people to pay him for help). He will merely claim to have done so on his notorious "four dozen bills" that he knew were all dead-on-arrival when he voted for them, until right-wing talk-show hosts purr. Let's replace Frank with Rep. Pam Tucker.
- See more at: www.unionleader.com/Franks-Book-Club-Guinta-reads-to-the-financial-sector#sthash.cuHLXcYh.dpuf
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