Congressional Freshmen For Sale

Gotta get the new crop of freshmen in the House while they're young and impressionable.  Just ask Kentucky's Andy Barr of KY-6 in the central part of the state.

Mr. Barr, 40, a first-time elected official, has raised nearly as much money this year from political action committees run by major banks, credit unions and insurance companies as longtime lawmakers like Speaker John A. Boehner and other party leaders. 

The flood of financial industry cash — $150,000 in political action committee donations to Mr. Barr in just six months — is hardly an accident. 

One afternoon in April, Mr. Barr hosted credit union lobbyists and executives in his House office just before a committee hearing, promising that he would help protect a federal tax break worth $500 million a year, the executives said. Last month, he introduced legislation to eliminate a new federal rule intended to prevent banks from issuing mortgages to customers who could not afford to repay the debt — a measure pushed by bank lobbyists who had visited his office. 

“People support him because they agree with him,” Catherine Gatewood, Mr. Barr’s spokeswoman, said after he declined requests for an interview. 

Sure they do.  Andy Barr's district includes Powell and Estill Counties, places with nearly 25% poverty rates.  And he's wanting to make it easier for banks to commit predatory lending there and to remove protections for his constituents.  Why?  Because the banking industry paid him $150,000 to do so.  Chump change when you're buying an ally for a half a billion dollar tax cut.

But it's not just Republican freshmen cashing in, oh no.

The imbalance is apparent on the Democratic side as well. Each of the seven freshman Democrats on the committee has raised more industry PAC money so far this year than the committee’s top Democrat, Representative Maxine Waters of California, who has had a testy relationship with the industry. 

These freshman Democrats joined this year with Republicans on the committee — over the objection of Ms. Waters and the Obama administration — to support measures advocated by Wall Street banks that would roll back some of the strictest provisions of the landmark Dodd-Frank financial regulations, which were passed in 2010 in the aftermath of the global recession. 

A spokeswoman for Representative Patrick Murphy, a Florida Democrat who has taken in more industry PAC money than any other Democratic freshman, $53,500, said his votes had been cast based on what he believed was in the best interest of his constituents, not to please potential contributors. But she agreed that the pressure to raise money was intense. 

“The system is what the system is,” said Tiffany Muller, Mr. Murphy’s deputy chief of staff, adding that her boss supported changing campaign finance rules. 

People wonder how we have 90-95% of incumbents get re-elected to an institution with a 9% approval rating.  It's because your Representative gets bought within weeks and spends all their time fundraising from lobbyists to stay in the House. 

Maybe we want to do something about that, yes?