NCUA Is Small Potatoes

For credit unions, the NCUA is the center of our nation’s capital.

But new number-crunching by the Center for Responsive Politics demonstrated that in the broad scheme of things, the agency is pretty small potatoes.

The good folks at the center have released an updated database that shows the number of lobbyists who, on their lobbying registration documents, identify the federal agencies they lobby.

It’s a political junkie’s dream come true.

For instance, 2,354 lobbyists said they’re lobbying the Treasury Department this year, while 2,318 said they were lobbying the Department of Health and Human Services.

Some 402 lobbyists are pressuring the CFPB, while 326 are lobbying the FDIC.

The NCUA?

A mere 72 lobbyists identify the agency as one of their targets (and the group includes at least one banking lobbyist).

Of course, that probably isn’t the total number of folks working on NCUA-related issues, as it doesn’t include the folks lobbying Congress on NCUA-related issues.

And most of the lobbying registration requirements have loopholes large enough to drive a Brinks Truck through.

For instance, folks who simply give “strategic advice” to clients don’t have to register as lobbyists.

That one is particularly handy for former members of Congress who take a cooling-off period before they can actually lobby.

So far this year, credit unions and their trade groups have spent almost $6.4 million on lobbying the agencies, Capitol Hill and the White House.

The payday lending industry has spent almost $2.4 million on lobbying this year.

The banking sector, of course, is much larger than the credit union industry and the figures correspond with that.

Commercial banks have spent $46.1 million so far this year on lobbying.

Cooking the Books

I’m a bookstore nut. One of the first things I do when I visit a new town is check out the bookstores.

I drive my family crazy.

I like the independent ones run by folks who appreciate books, but sometimes Barnes and Noble is the only store around.

On two occasions during the past year, I visited a Barnes and Noble in suburban Maryland and found books critical of President Trump turned around on shelves, so they were more difficult to find.

You couldn’t see the front cover – just the back one.

I figured that some fan of the president was performing some mischief, so I turned the books back around so anyone interested in buying the books could find them.

(And yes, if I had found some pro-Trump books with their covers turned around, I would have made them more visible as well.)

Still, when I found the anti-Trump books turned around on more than one occasion, I became suspicious about what might be going on.

And I was right to be suspicious.

I recently read about the public library in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Somebody was hiding anti-Trump books and others that dealt with social issues.

The New York Times reported that after learning his book about President Trump cheating at golf went missing, author Rick Reilly announced he was going to bring 10 copies of the book to the Coeur d’Alene library and hide them so people who wanted to read them might have an easier time finding them.

Sad.

Here We Go Again

I’ve written about this before, so maybe I’m beating a dead horse.

But the level of civility – or lack of civility – in our nation’s capital seems to be continuing to drop. The moment you think things can’t possibly get worse, they do.

Here are some recent examples:

During a campaign rally featuring President Trump, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), had this to say about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): “I don’t mean any disrespect, but it must suck to be that dumb.”

No disrespect? Enough said about that.

Then, there’s House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who has been engaged in a bitter war of words with Trump ever since he took office.

Here’s how she began a recent letter to the president: “Your shamelessness knows no bounds.”

Nice way to start a letter, isn’t it?

Finally, here’s what Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told CBS News about the Republican Party: “One of the critical components of this story is the absolute moral degeneration of the Republican Party. They’re behaving like members of a religious cult.”

Some members of Congress appear to be acting like little children trying to out-insult each other for their 15 seconds of infamy.

At the start of the 116th Congress, the House established a select committee to study how to make Congress work better. The committee was set to expire in February, but the House agreed to extend the committee’s term through the end of next year.

The committee is charged with producing recommendations for how to modernize how Congress does its work.

“The extension allows the Select Committee to continue its work proposing bipartisan reforms to make Congress work better for the American people,” the panel said in describing its goals.

One worthy goal wouldn’t take much investigation or a rule change: Treat each other the way you want to be treated.

There are some folks working on that. Two Ohio members of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Steve Stivers, a Republican, and Joyce Beatty, a Democrat, last year formed a Congressional Civility and Respect Caucus, a group devoted to trying to encourage respectful dialogues of difficult issues.

That shouldn’t be too much to ask, is it?

That isn’t what’s happening now.

It’s no longer enough to disagree with other people; you’ve got to demonize them.

It should be enough for any member of Congress to be so embarrassed that they put a paper bag over their head.

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