Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

The party that cried wolf

Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) wrote a letter to Mary Shapiro, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking for any documentation that the agency had been in contact with Democratic leadership before launching what resulted in a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. Issa’s rather overt implication was that the lawsuit has no basis and is just a political ploy by Democrats to stir up anger against Wall Street and the party often associated with them, the Republicans.

At face value, there is nothing wrong with asking this of the SEC. Aside from the heated rhetoric with which Issa wrote the letter, he serves as ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This is one of the roles we should expect opposition party members to fill to make sure that the ruling party is not abusing its power..

If the Goldman Sachs lawsuit really is a naked attempt to gin up populist resentment of Wall Street; coordination between the White House, the SEC and various entities of the Democratic Party can probably be found. During the Bush years, Democrats wrote at least a handful of these kinds of letters, so it would be doubly hypocritical for me to blast Republicans for doing the same now. Though Shapiro seemed to think it harmed the institution for the question to even be posed, the truth is that we need someone to ask this question. It seems to me that neither Democrats nor Republicans were asking enough questions before the financial sector debacle hit its crisis point.

The problem is that Issa did not write the letter out of sincere concern about the abuse of power. He possesses no expertise on financial sector issues. This is a fact: He does not sit on a committee with direct influence over financial policy. He has a limited background in business. In addition, despite all his years as a member of Congress, he has authored virtually no legislation related to this issue. When Issa was part of the majority during the Bush administration, he refused to investigate potential abuses of power far more grounded in fact than this. In fact, the biggest accomplishment that Issa can claim on that committee is accusing families of slain Blackwater security guards of lying about who wrote their testimony that reflected poorly on the GOP-friendly organization.

That is what this issue ultimately comes down to. Issa wants to score political points against the administration, feeling that if he can make the lawsuit a partisan issue, maybe the Democrats will not gain politically from it. If the letter had been written by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), who is playing a constructive role in financial sector reform legislation, I may have believed otherwise. If the letter had been written by Sen. Dick Shelby (R-Alabama) or Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) – people who are showing now, or have shown in the past a willingness to look at government abuse as a bipartisan issue – I may have believed otherwise. But it is Issa, a Republican from an ultra-wealthy California House district with a desperate need to rise through the ranks of caucus leadership.

In the long run, this is what will ultimately ail the GOP. From the stimulus to the budget to the health care bill and now the financial reform bill where the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) made the ridiculous claim that it guarantees taxpayer-led corporate bailouts in the future; making everything a political calculation. It is the Washington version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

Republicans know they can not win the public relations battle on financial reform because the only talking points they have are the ones fed directly to their offices from the Wall Street lobbyists. They oppose any regulation, and they oppose taxing banks if they put their customers in unnecessary risk and so on. That is all well and good, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but those are not positions that will gain favor from the voting public. So the only thing left to do is make the battle over Wall Street reform and the Goldman Sachs lawsuit intensely political, turn the public off and hope that cynicism can depress any potential political gain.

Admittedly, there are some members of the Republican Congressional caucus that seem interested in making compromises on select issues in the wake of their loss in the health care fight. It is their ability to govern that is probably the more serious threat to GOP gains in the fall. The greatest potential for political gain, then, is not the Goldman Sachs lawsuit or the financial reform debate. It is Democrats pointing out the stark, unavoidable truth: Republicans really do not have anyone credible that could have written that letter to the SEC. With all the problems our country faces, if we cannot trust the GOP to do the little things responsibly, I doubt the American people will think they can do the big things at all.

Scott Harris is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

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