Melissa Bean: "The Leader of the PAC"
Bill Scheurer
The big blue circle represents Bean’s (IL-8TH) giant share of PAC donations to make sure we do not have real healthcare reform or consumer protection laws.
This article notes that Rep. Bean is planning to introduce a notorious amendment to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Agency – this is why these companies invest so heavily in these legislators, because they sit on the House Financial Services Committee, no matter which party is in “control.”
PAC donations flow to financial reform opponents
The
Sunlight Foundation has ranked
FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) campaign donations to members of
the House Financial Services Committee. Leader of the "PAC" is Rep.
Melissa Bean (D-IL), with $269,800 of FIRE donations in 2009 out of a total of
$634,535. Bean is expected to offer the worst gutting amendment to the Consumer
Financial Protection Agency Act. The Bean amendment - as it is widely
understood although not yet circulated - would eviscerate the bill's
reinstatement of the longstanding policy that federal law serve as a floor but
state laws could go higher. Under Bean, we would roll back to the recent system
of federal preemption of stronger state consumer laws. Somnolent federal
regulators that ignored, or aided and abetted, the growth of unfair and abusive
practices leading to the crisis, would stay in charge, if you call it that. As
I told the AP a few days ago: "That's
the system we have now. That's the system that failed." The picture
above links to the full picture at Sunlight.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at October 12, 2009 04:42 PM
http://static.uspirg.org/consumer/archives/2009/10/post_1.html
