When it comes to doing the bidding of the big banks, Sen. Deb Fischer’s fealty to Wall Street is complete and obedient. As Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin put it in April 2009 about the finance lobby “they are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”
After the 2008 financial collapse, Congress passed the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank, a law which made changes affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation’s financial services industry.
What is critical to understand is that an army of Wall Street firms and their lobbyists in Washington worked around the clock to water down the bill as it made its way through the legislative process. And after it became law, those lobbyists continued to attack the statute’s implementation by weakening its various regulations.
Servants of corporate greed like Fischer hated Dodd-Frank and they set about to repeal as much of it as they could. In March 2018, the Senate debated a bill, backed by President Trump, that bore the wholesome and misleading title Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, that Fischer voted for that used smaller community banks and credit unions to push for regulatory relief for the banks. The bill was a gift to Wall Street wrapped in false claims that it would rescue smaller lenders. At the time, banks had hauled in record profits over the past three years and were among the biggest winners under Trump’s big tax cut law. The policy director at Americans for Financial Reform was quoted in Politico as saying “I don’t see the real-world problem [the bill] is trying to solve, except the problem of bankers’ not making enough money.”
The bill Fischer championed released dozens of banks from tougher oversight by the Federal Reserve including no longer subjecting them to yearly stress tests by the Fed or mandating higher capital requirements meant to ensure that risky banks could survive a lending crisis.
Just a month after that vote to weaken Dodd-Frank, Fischer stuck it consumers when she voted to scrap a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau directive that targeted auto-lending bias. Senate Republicans voted to upend a policy preventing discrimination by freeing car dealers from restrictions on loan markups. The issue is a common practice at auto dealerships – they add markup to the interest rates that lenders charge on loans and pocket it. The CFPB said such markups were routinely higher for minorities and had warned that it might go after lenders for not adhering to fair lending laws. CFPB had sought to eliminate dealer markups over concerns that Black and Latino customers were often charged higher rates than whites with identical credit profiles, citing several analyses – including their own – of vehicle loan data. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) supported repealing the CFPB guidance. In her 2012 and 2018 elections, NADA gave Fischer $10,000 in campaign cash each time.
In October 2017, Fischer voted to overturn a CFPB rule aimed at making it easier for customers to sue banks, handing financial firms another big victory in their battle against regulations imposed in the wake of the financial meltdown. Then-Vice President Pence cast the tie-breaking vote as the measure passed 51Y-50N. The CFPB rule would have limited companies’ ability to impose arbitration agreements on customers in financial contracts, making it easier for aggrieved parties to join together in class-action lawsuits. Democrats and other supporters of the rule argued it would give consumers an important protection against mistreatment by banks. The CFPB rule targeted clauses that are often buried in the fine print of contracts that consumers sign when they get credit cards or open checking accounts. The language bars customers from banding together to file class-action suits, instead requiring them to settle disputes through arbitration. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said “this bill is a giant wet kiss to Wall Street. Bank lobbyists are crawling all over this place, begging Congress to vote and make it easier for them to cheat consumers.”
In return for her loyal support of their legislative agenda, the big banks have been giving Deb Fischer wet kisses in the form of wads of campaign cash. Here is a breakdown of her haul from some of Wall Street’s biggest players:
Bank of America $12,064 (2012-2024)
Citigroup Inc. $1,500 (2016)
Goldman Sachs $26,200 (2018-2024)
JP Morgan Chase & Co. $7,600 (2018-2024)
Morgan Stanley $5,090 (2012-2024)
PNC Financial Services $500 (2018)
US Bankcorp $28,100 (2012-2020)
Wells Fargo $17,462 (2012-2024)
That’s $98,516 from just these eight financial behemoths. (Source: www.opensecrets.org)