The House Financial Services Committee aka “Money Committee”
One of the stories that I did was looking at the House Financial Services Committee and how seats on that committee .. It’s sometimes called the “money committee” or the “cash committee” because it draws more money from lobbying and from corporate players that any other committee because it is the committee that regulates Wall Street; and so freshmen are put on that committee because it’s a great way for them to raise a lot of money quickly and to defend their seat after their first term. As a member of Congress you are most vulnerable, after you’ve gotten elected, in your second election and if you win your second election, unless you do something really bad or there’s a major change in the politics of the United States, you’re pretty safe, so Freshmen are put on Financial Services because they want to quickly raise money.
.. The freshmen who are on financial services who are busy raising money from Wall Street, most of them went along with the provisions that would change Dodd Frank (and ease restrictions on the banks). The more senior members by and large Democrats ,along with the administration spoke out against … (voted against)
.. There’s intense pressure on them to raise money but they must raise money from the same world that they are supposedly regulating. And so how do you you raise money from Wall Street and yet at the same time be tough on them? And so if you look at some of the votes that they’ve taken the folks that under the most pressure to raise money tend to be the folks that are voting in favor of the legislation that the lobbyist on Wall Street are pushing.
(31 -34 min)