Dem Divisions Surface at Financial Services Committee

It appears that House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is facing her first public Democratic revolt since she took over the helm at the beginning of the year.

You can blame it on the Export-Import Bank.

Waters apparently struck a deal with the committee’s ranking Republican, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, on reauthorizing the bank for seven years, which is a pretty neat trick, given the recent history of the institution that provides loan guarantees to foreign purchasers of American products.

The bank has suffered from a lack of bipartisan support for years. Conservatives blocked confirmation of bank board members in an effort to ensure that the bank didn’t have a quorum.

And without a quorum, the bank was unable to do much business.

Which was fine with the conservatives, many of whom viewed the bank as corporate welfare.

But it wasn’t so fine with folks like Financial Services Committee member Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), whose district includes thousands of Boeing employees; Boeing is a major beneficiary of Ex-Im loans.

Now the board has a full slate of members, but its authorizing legislation expires in September.

Waters and McHenry struck a deal for a seven-year reauthorization and the chairwoman scheduled a June 26 markup.

But Waters ended up having to pull the bill because folks like Heck didn’t like new restrictions that were built into it, and progressives said there were insufficient environmental safeguards.

So this marks the first time Waters has had to face a public revolt in her committee, which has produced high-profile legislation such as a renewal of the federal flood insurance program and cannabis banking legislation.

And some progressive members of the committee have pushed for other controversial legislative proposals. For instance, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been a proponent of postal banking.

If that weren’t enough … well, keep reading.

Bad Dems

There’s been talk about some progressives trying to recruit candidates to run in primaries against Democrats they believe aren’t Democratic enough.

Now, one group, RootsAction, has identified 15 House Democrats it says should face primary challenges and five of them are on the Financial Services Committee.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chairman of the committee’s Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions Subcommittee, deserves to go home to Queens, the group says.

The group also says Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) has been kowtowing to Republicans and Wall Street-types who have supported his campaigns with hefty contributions.

The group cites a Bloomberg story that called Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a former Goldman Sachs employee, “Wall Street’s Favorite Democrat.”

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), another senior member of the committee, has accepted tons of campaign contributions from financial services political action committees and is a member of moderate Democratic organizations.

Rounding out the list is Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), whom the group identified as a hardliner on Israel and who has been critical of freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for not being a hardliner on Israel.

Justice Democrats, a political action committee that originally recruited Ocasio-Cortez to run against then-incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) to run against Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), has also been pushing progressive candidates to run against Democrats.

In response, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has said it will not do business with any campaign consultant who helps an insurgent run against an incumbent Democrat.

Financial Services Committee Democrats are squarely in the middle of the intramural battles among Democrats.

So far, the fights have not openly affected committee business.

But November 2020 is still far off in the future.

Come on, Man: Chapter 467

He’s at it again, and it’s getting worse. It’s no secret that President Trump doesn’t like the press – and he would argue that the press doesn’t like him.

During the first two years of his term, he’s made no secret of his dislike for one of the pillars of democracy.

But his rhetoric appears to be firing up, as he throws red meat to his followers and prepares to run for reelection.

Just within the past few weeks, Trump has:

• Accused The New York Times of committing a “virtual act of treason” by reporting that the administration had escalated its cyber attacks on the Russian power grid. Never mind that officials from the National Security Agency said they had no problem with the newspaper reporting it.
• Threatened to throw a Time magazine photographer in jail for supposedly taking a photo of a letter Trump didn’t want the magazine to use.
• And perhaps most maddening was his exchange with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the recent G20 summit meeting.

Referring to the news media, Trump told Putin, “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.”

Trump made his comment on June 28, the first anniversary of the murder of five staff members of the Capital-Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md. Granted, the man charged in the murder had a personal gripe with the newspaper and did not invade its offices with a political motive.

Still, back in the U.S., many people were commemorating the solemn day.

The Columbia Journalism Review recently reported that between 1992 and this year, 59 journalists were murdered in Russia.

Which makes Trump’s comment to Putin, “Get rid of them,” even more outrageous.

That same week, Trump told reporters at a news conference, “I get along with everybody – except you people, actually.”

That’s fine. He doesn’t have to like us. Some people I’ve dealt with through the years, including some members of Congress, haven’t liked what I’ve written.

Most eventually got over it, although there was one House chairman who refused to talk to me for three months.

But even the angriest would have acknowledged that my colleagues and I had the constitutional right to write what we were writing.

That appears to be a lesson that Trump can’t – or won’t – learn.

David Baumann is a correspondent-at-large for CU Times. He can be reached at dbaumann@cutimes.com.