Tag Archives: Thomas Perez

The New Definition Of Senate Oversight

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Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted a story about an exchange between HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin and ranking Sen. Lamar Alexander at a Senate Hearing.

Senator Alexander asked Labor Secretary Thomas Perez  if he believes that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is qualified to judge the impact of raising the minimum wage. The CBO has stated that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. Perez did not directly answer the question.

The article reports what happened next:

Harkin said that Perez can “answer as he wants to answer, not as you direct him to answer. You can’t force him to say one thing or another. If he wants to answer that question, then he can answer that question.”

Alexander: “So a senator is not entitled to a yes-or-no answer to a specific question?”

Harkin: “The senator is entitled to ask a question, and the secretary can give the answer as he sees fit.”

Alexander: “That’s not much congressional oversight in my book.”

Harkin: “Well, it’s being respectful of people who want to respond in the way that they feel is best suited to answering the question.”

Alexander: “Well then we might as well not ask questions if we can’t get answers.”

This exchange depicts where we are in Washington. Congress has given up so much power that it has lost its oversight of the executive branch of government. It will be interesting to see if the minimum wage gets raised by an executive order. Then we will see if there are enough people in Congress who respect the Constitution to demand that it be followed. America has serious economic issues–this is not the time to play political games with people’s lives.

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An Unfortunate Choice Of Nominee

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Yesterday’s Washington Times posted an article stating that present and former justice department attorneys do not support the nomination of Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez to be secretary of labor. It seems as if some of Mr. Perez’s actions as Assistant Attorney General were not in full compliance with the law.

The article reports:

“People should be raising serious questions about this nomination,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a veteran Justice Department lawyer who formerly served as counsel to the division. “This is a man who misled both Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“He was the focus last week of the most devastating indictment of a federal government agency I have even seen,” he added, noting that the Justice Department’s office of inspector general in a 258-page report documented widespread intimidation, harassment and even threats of violence under Mr. Perez’s leadership.

 This does not sound like someone we want in charge of the Department of Labor.

This is another part of this story that is deeply troubling.  Mr. Perez intervened in a legal case involving the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The case involved St. Paul’s agreement to drop its appeal in exchange for an agreement by Justice not to join a fraud lawsuit against the city. The case had the potential to return more than $180 million in damages to the U.S. treasury.

The article reports:

They (Three House members — Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; and Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican and chairman of the House Oversight financial services subcommittee) said they were “shocked to learn” that Mr. Perez — over the objections of career Justice Department attorneys — had enticed the city to drop its lawsuit that he “did not want decided by the Supreme Court.” They said Mr. Perez was concerned that a decision in the city’s favor “would dry up the massive mortgage lending settlements his division was obtaining by suing banks for housing discrimination based on disparate effects rather than any proof of intent to discriminate.”

 We have seen this problem in other areas. One of the reason that Congress has not really gone after the big banks is that the fines that can be levied against the banks for various charges are an easy flow of money into the treasury. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the ultimate source of that money is the consumer. Another reason Congress hasn’t done much about the banks is that an investigation of the bank’s roll in the 2008 collapse would also reveal the part the Congress and the Community Reinvestment Act played in the collapse.

 At any rate, Mr. Perez is not a good nominee, and his name should be withdrawn. He is another potential part of gangster government.

Now That We Know This, What Should We Do ?

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Yesterday PJMedia posted an article by J. Christian Adams about the newly released Inspector General‘s report on Tom Perez’s DOJ Civil Rights Division. Tom Perez is President Obama’s potential Labor secretary nominee.

The report exposes serious racial bias in the law enforcement practices of the Obama Justice Department.

The article reports:

The report was prepared in response to Representative Frank Wolf’s (R-VA) outrage over the New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal.  In response to the report, Rep. Wolf said today, the “report makes clear that the division has become a rat’s nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic mismanagement.”

Former Voting Section Chief Chris Coates and I both testified about the hostility towards race-neutral law enforcement by the Justice Department.

Today’s report paints a disgusting portrait, confirming our accounts.

It is entirely possible that Tom Perez was simply following orders issued by Attorney General Holder, but do we want to promote someone who was unwilling to enforce the law equally for all Americans? Please follow the link to the article at PJMedia to read the entire account.

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This Isn’t New, But It’s Important

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Today Investors.com posted a story stating that:

President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a “broad-based frustration” among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis.

“You’re seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place,” he complained earlier this month.

The article asks, “But what if government encouraged, even invented, those “abusive practices”?

Well, they did. In December of 2008, I (rightwinggranny.com) posted an article linking to a youtube video entitled “Burning Down The House.” The story told in that video may be finally getting out. I strongly suggest you follow the link and watch the video.

Investors.com is reporting on a document from 1994 that sought to make sure that there was no discrimination in the lending industry. A great idea, but it overlooked the fact that banks needed to discriminate against those people seeking loans that they were unable to pay back.

The article reports:

At President Clinton’s direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties.

The threat was codified in a 20-page “Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending” and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining.

The edict — completely overlooked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the mainstream media — was signed by then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Attorney General Janet Reno, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, along with the heads of six other financial regulatory agencies.

“The agencies will not tolerate lending discrimination in any form,” the document warned financial institutions.

This is the root of the housing crisis. Someone much wiser than I once said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This is an example of that statement.

We haven’t learned our lesson yet. The article reports:

Tom Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, recently testified that his division “continues to participate in the federal Interagency Fair Lending Task Force.” And he and the task force are working with the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to “enhance fair-lending enforcement.”

The fair-lending task force’s original policy paper undercuts the notion the financial crisis was all about banker “greed,” though it certainly played a role after the fact. Rather, it offers compelling evidence that the crisis evolved chiefly from government mandates and threats to increase lending to applicants who could not afford them.

This is the story about our current financial woes that needs to be told.