8 CEOs of banks that benefited from the government’s bailout program appeared before the House Financial Services Committee. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The House Financial Services Committee has grown so large that a highly unusual fourth row of seats had to be installed in the committee room. Every term, scores of members, particularly freshmen, demand a seat on the panel — not because they have a burning interest in regulating banks and Wall Street, but because they know that they will be able raise much more money if one of the 61 seats has their name on it.
Committee member Robert Hurt of Virginia has accepted $214,475 from the Securities & Investment
industry and another $124,300 from the commercial banking industry during his career. -opensecrets.org
As Eric Lipton recently explained in The Times, Financial Services has become known as “the cash committee” because interest groups donate more money to its members than to those of any other House committee. More than $10 million has been given to its members just this year, and most of it has come from the big names the committee oversees. Contributors included employees of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, the Credit Union National Association, the Investment Company Institute, Wells Fargo and many of the biggest accounting firms and insurance companies.
Committee members don’t seem particularly ashamed of the favors they do for those providing the cash..