U.S. House passes “Citibill” to partially roll back the Dodd-Frank Reform Act

Once again, some­thing is rot­ten in the peo­ple’s House.

Ear­li­er today, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed two hun­dred and nine­ty-two to one hun­dred and twen­ty-two to pass H.R. 992, offi­cial­ly titled the Swaps Reg­u­la­to­ry Improve­ment Act. Like MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, we’re call­ing H.R. 992 Citibill because it was pri­mar­i­ly authored by Cit­i­group lob­by­ists.

It would repeal a key pro­vi­sion of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act, enact­ed into law in 2010, that for­bids banks from using insured deposits for deriv­a­tives trad­ing (also known as finan­cial gambling).

Sad­ly, sev­en­ty Democ­rats, includ­ing sev­er­al from the Pacif­ic North­west, joined all but three Repub­li­cans in vot­ing for this trav­es­ty. Why? Why would sev­en­ty Democ­rats vote for a bill writ­ten by Wall Street lob­by­ists to ben­e­fit Wall Street?

Well, this is why:

House aides, when asked why Democ­rats would vote for this pro­pos­al even though the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion oppos­es it, offered a polit­i­cal expla­na­tion. Repub­li­cans have enough votes to pass it them­selves, so vul­ner­a­ble House Democ­rats might as well join them, and col­lect indus­try mon­ey for their campaigns.

“It is a free vote,” one aide explained Monday.

Empha­sis is mine.

Is it any won­der ordi­nary Amer­i­cans are fed up with Con­gress? Law­mak­ers con­tin­ue to demon­strate that they care more about serv­ing the wealthy and the pow­er­ful than their con­stituents. One in two mem­bers of Con­gress is a mil­lion­aire. Most Amer­i­cans can only dream about hav­ing that kind of wealth.

It costs a lot of mon­ey to run cam­paigns these days, espe­cial­ly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Cor­po­ra­tions Unit­ed deci­sion, which opened the flood­gates for shad­owy front groups to oper­ate anony­mous­ly on behalf of pow­er­ful, wealthy donors, spend­ing big bucks to buy elec­tions. It’s sad that many law­mak­ers seem more pre­oc­cu­pied with run­ning for reelec­tion than governing.

This includes Democ­rats as well as Repub­li­cans, though it’s worth not­ing that most of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus did vote no on on Citibill, where­as only three Repub­li­cans cast no votes. (The dis­sent­ing Repub­li­cans were Thomas Massie of Ken­tucky, John Dun­can of Ten­nessee, and Wal­ter Jones of North Carolina).

With the excep­tion of House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cau­cus Chair Xavier Becer­ra, Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship either did not vote on the bill (Leader Nan­cy Pelosi, DCCC Chair­man Steve Israel) or vot­ed for it (Whip Ste­ny Hoy­er, Assis­tant Leader James Clyburn).

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Den­ny Heck (WA), Earl Blu­me­nauer and Kurt Schrad­er (OR); Repub­li­cans Doc Hast­ings, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, Dave Reichert (WA), Greg Walden (OR), Raul Labrador and Mike Simp­son (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Don Young (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Suzan Del­Bene, Jim McDer­mott, Adam Smith (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Pete DeFazio (OR)

Not Vot­ing: Repub­li­can Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler (WA)

Only five rep­re­sen­ta­tives from our region — all Democ­rats — had the courage to stand up to Wall Street and reject Citibill. We’re proud to see Suzan Del­Bene’s name in the no col­umn, as she rep­re­sents NPI’s home con­gres­sion­al dis­trict. We’re also glad to see that Adam Smith also joined Jim McDer­mott in cast­ing a no vote.

But we are incred­i­bly dis­ap­point­ed in Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Den­ny Heck, Earl Blu­me­nauer and Kurt Schrad­er. This vote is a black mark against all five of them. We’re used to Repub­li­cans doing Wall Street’s bid­ding; we expect any­one who calls him or her­self a Demo­c­rat to have more integri­ty than that.

Accord­ing to Map­light, Wall Street is the top source of cam­paign cash for six out of Citibil­l’s eight cospon­sors. What’s more, Wall Street has giv­en near­ly six times more mon­ey to the rep­re­sen­ta­tives who vot­ed for the bill than the rep­re­sen­ta­tives who vot­ed against. That is not a coin­ci­dence: mon­ey talks.

Citibill may not have much of a future in the U.S. Sen­ate. Pre­sum­ably it will be referred to the Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee and/or Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee. Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell, Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, and Eliz­a­beth War­ren sit on those com­mit­tees, and we’re con­fi­dent they will make sure this awful leg­is­la­tion gets the neg­a­tive recep­tion that it deserves.