DeLauro joins lawmakers donating pay
WASHINGTON — With the partial government shutdown now in Day 34, Rep. Rosa DeLauro is joining the ranks of those on Capitol Hill deferring pay until it is over.
“I will be withholding my pay for the month of January onward until the government reopens,” DeLauro said. “Federal workers are missing their paychecks, and members of Congress should be in the same boat until those workers start getting paid again.”
DeLauro joins over 80 House members and 20 or more senators who have elected to forgo pay. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is the other Connecticut lawmaker to give up their checks for the duration. Blumenthal, who regularly tops the list of wealthiest members of Congress thanks to the Malkin real estate fortune via wife Cynthia, is donating to Homes for the Brave of Bridgeport, which helps homeless veterans.
“I made the personal decision to donate my salary during the Trump Shutdown to Homes for the Brave, but there are a variety of ways that Members of Congress can show support for federal employees, like participating in food drives and charity dinners,” he said . . . graciously.
DeLauro may not be in Blumenthal’s well-heeled stratosphere, but it’s safe to assume she’s comfortable, with husband Stan Greenberg doing well as a bigname Democratic pollster and consultant.
Rep. Jim Himes still get his checks, but he “is making donations to organizations that are helping Connecticut residents who may be harmed by the shutdown,” his spokesman, Patrick Malone, said.
Sen. Chris Murphy is “not donating,” his spokeswoman, Laura Maloney, said. End of story.
Rep. Jahana Hayes’ spokesman did not respond to my query, not entirely unwise on his part, perhaps.
AOC in the House
The House Financial Services Committee can be a volatile place, given its role in overseeing Wall Street and all those Fairfield-County-based hedge funds and private equity firms. After all, a financial meltdown doesn’t happen but once a decade or maybe a bit longer — or so we hope.
But most of the time, the committee’s work is a mindnumbing walk through the thicket of financial regulation, with only the wellversed — yes, like Himes — attuned to the ripple effect downstream.
Now comes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y. — AOC to the initiated. AOC, of course, is the much celebrated (or reviled, depending on your point of view) uber-leftist whose ultimate ambition is to level the income-distribution playing field. Some would call it socialism, a label from which she does not flee. Others would call it long overdue after years of 1percenters delivering truckloads of “trickle-down” Kool-Aid to the masses.
After a decade in Congress,Rep. Jim Himes is a senior member of the committee. He helped draft sections of the Dodd-Frank law, which Democrats passed after the Great Recession to bring an unprecedented level of regulation to the financial-services world.
And thanks to 12 years at Goldman Sachs, Himes actually may know more about the inner mechanics of the nation’s financial structure than anyone else in Congress.
But he’s not averse to tweaking Dodd-Frank to make it work more effectively and not tie up the players in needless red tape.
Even so, some of his fellow Democrats see any attempt to revise Dodd-Frank as capitulation to Republicans.
So even though they’re members of the same party, Himes and AOC may find they don’t have a lot upon which to agree. But let’s face it, making an enemy of AOC is not be the wisest move for a Democrat — even one like Himes who leans to the center.
Himes, for the record, “is excited for AOC to join the committee,” spokesman Malone said. “She brings energy and attention to the important issues (Financial Services) tackles and he looks forward to working with her.”