Marco global de la propuesta

When one takes a look at the graph representing the voting behavior of the House leadership on all legislation concerning the five sectors discussed in this paper, the results look remarkably similar to the voting behavior results on the amendment process of H.R.1. Again Republican legislators vote overwhelmingly in concert with the interests of their donors, whereas Democrats tend to adhere to the party line which often is contrary to the interests of their donors. This dynamic is even more

pronounced when voting on the passage of complete bills. This is mostly because of the whipping process within the party that precedes each vote and the time that is taken to discuss the voting process within the parties.

Of course this process is not perfect and it tends to happens that a member is inclined to vote against the party line, but the frequency with which this happens is much lower where voting “on passage” is concerned than during the amendment process to a particular bill. Despite the tendency of

representatives to adhere to the party line, a few very interesting dynamics cropped up in the voting behavior of the House leadership positions.

47 With the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis still echoing in the American economy, with unemployment only just starting to fall in late 2011 from 9% to 8.5%, the financial sector was still under a lot of pressure to reform.136 The

Dodd-Frank Act had just passed in July of 2010, only a year ago, but the 112th House of Representatives deemed that the bill already needed revision.137

Powers of persons appointed to newly created bodies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were redefined.138

Definitions, limits and prohibitions on trades

were changed and lifted.139 These changes weren’t that large and the changes that were made were almost always meant to free up still scantily available capital for business or to streamline bureaucratic procedure. Nevertheless, many of these changes were beneficial to the financial industry in the fashion described in chapter 6.1, by freeing up more demand for financial instruments and speeding up and thereby lessening the intensity of the oversight process. Of the fifteen votes on legislation concerning the financial industry, six were perfectly bipartisan across both House leaderships; two were

completely bipartisan but counted a certain number of abstained votes, one was completely bipartisan save for one Democratic vote against the bill. The remaining votes were either along party lines or along party lines with some abstained votes. In the 112th House of Representatives, this percentage of

135 _{Center for Responsive Politics: OpenSecrets.org, Top 20 Contributors to Campaign Cmte in 2012, per} candidate. URLs in Bibliography.

136

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Seasonally Adjusted Unemployment Rate 16 years or older, series: LNS14000000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 Accessed: July 4 2017

137 _{Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 111}th _{Cong. 2}nd _{Sess. Public Law 111–203, 12} U.S.C. 5301 (12 July, 2010)

138 _{Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2011, H.R.1315, 112}th _{Cong. 1}st Sess. (21 July 2011) https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/1315

139 _{To amend the securities laws to establish certain thresholds for shareholder registration, and for other} purposes, H.R.1965, 112th Cong. 1st Sess. (2 November 2011). https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th- congress/house-bill/1965;

Small Company Capital Formation Act of 2011, H.R.1070, 112th Cong. 1st Sess. (2 November 2011). https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/1070;

Access to Capital for Job Creators Act, H.R.2940, 112th Cong. 1st Sess. (8 November 2011). https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/2940/text

Figure 9. Name of Representative

Donations from the Finance, Insurance, Real-Estate sector In the 2012 election cycle.135 Eric Cantor $2.100.000 Kevin McCarthy $973.000 Pete Sessions $498.000 Jeb Hensarling $1.300.000 Paul Ryan $875.000 Nancy Pelosi $417.000 Steny Hoyer $862.000 John Larson $483.000 Steve Israel $757.000 Debbie Wasserman- Schultz $431.000

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bipartisan cooperation was achieved in no other sector, nor in any other matter except for the odd naming of a post office. This dynamic can only be explained through two interpretations. Either all these bills were drafted in a bipartisan fashion, or both parties were strongly inclined to vote for these measures that could have had a positive impact on the financial industry. I would argue that a

combination of the two is the most likely explanation. Dodd-Frank was already regarded by many as lacking the stringent oversight measures needed to curtail the unfettered and at times systemically dangerous speculation displayed on Wall-Street before the 2008 crash. 140 Amending this law under a Republican majority could only result in Republican efforts to relax oversight and weaken the Obama- era financial oversight institutions. In the case of H.R.1315, one the men eponymous with the law, Barney Frank, expressed himself in no uncertain terms about this dynamic on the House floor:

“My Republican colleagues have had a little bit of a change of heart since last year. When we debated this bill in committee […] they wanted to kill the whole bureau. […] And the Republican position during the debate on this was: Do not set up a separate agency. Now they say, well, we’re not

opposing a separate agency, we just want to dismantle it, in effect. So we will get into the specifics, but let’s be clear: This is as close as they dare come now because of public opinion to abolishing the whole agency. They want to weaken it, and then they will want to undercut it altogether. Of course, this is the third major assault they’ve made on the financial reform bill.”141

Mr. Frank might be a bit biased against the amendation of his signature piece of legislation, but as one of the main legislators responsible for drafting the bill, his knowledge of the political intricacies surrounding the legislation is hard to overlook. Moreover, his criticism of the extremely limited time available for the amendment process regarding Dodd-Frank, speaks further to the Republican efforts to undercut the effectiveness of the legislation.

Voting on this bill happened almost completely along party lines, but interestingly Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer abstained from voting on this bill, while they both spoke or voted on the floor that

140 _{Hacker, Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 208-209.}

141 _{U.S. Congress, Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 112}th _{Cong. 2nd sess., 21 July} 2011, H5306. (Remarks by Barney Frank of Massachusetts)

49 same day.142Arguing that every piece of legislation was subject to similar political gamesmanship would certainly be incorrect. There is, however, precedent in this matter and therefore the possibility that Democratic representatives voted either knowingly or unknowingly to amend Dodd-Frank on these stark Republican mandated terms is present.

Voting behavior in the Healthcare, Oil/Gas/Coal/Mining and Telecom sectors was performed mainly along party lines and therefore resulted in the dynamic described earlier. The Defense industry, however, is worth mentioning in this respect. John Larson was the only representative who got enough money from Defense-related industries have this industry be part of his top5 donor sectors. The reason for this is the enormous factory in Mr. Larson’s district, Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford that is responsible for the construction of the F-35 engine. The combined initial contract price of three contracts was $7.07 billion, which overran to $8.79 billion by July 2013.143 None of the other House leadership members had such defense manufacturing operations in their districts. Paul Ryan had the second largest manufacturer in his district with a contract of $23.6m.144 This can be called a statistical anomaly. The selection process for the representatives was not based on their representativeness in the distributions of donations with respect to the complete group of House members, but on their relative political position in the party structure. This is an unfortunate accessory to have in the data, but it lends the opportunity to compare Larson’s voting behavior with the rest of the Democratic leadership. Of the six bills concerning the Defense industry, Larson twice voted contrary to his fellow Democrats, once on H.R.1540, the FY2012 DOD appropriations bill and once on H.R.2608, a continuing resolution for appropriations in 2012, by abstaining to vote.145 This 33% deviation from the general Leadership voting behavior invites the inference that these donations might have had some influence on Larson’s voting behavior on legislation concerning the Defense industry.

142 _{U.S. Congress, Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 112}th _{Cong. 2nd sess., 21 July} 2011, H5291-H5292, H5304.

143 _{Department of Defense: Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval, Selected Acquisition} Report, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft (F-35), (Washington 2014): 87-91. https://breakingdefense.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2014/04/F-35-2013-SAR.pdf

144 _{Ed. Daniel Parks, Robert Levinson, et.al., Bloomberg Government: Impact of Defense Spending: A State-by-} State Analysis, (17 November 2011): 12-61.

145 _{Final Vote Result For Roll Call 375: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, 112}th _{Cong. 1}st Sess. (26 May 2011) http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll375.xml Accessed: 5 July 2017

Final Vote Result For Roll Call 745: Small Business Program Extension and Reform Act of 2011, 112th Cong. 1st Sess. (4 October 2011) http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll745.xml Accessed: 5 July 2017

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General analysis of voting behavior by the House leadership of the 112th Congress, thus, yields some interesting results. The financial industry, as a result of an excessive number of donations, had a measurable influence on the voting behavior of these representatives in 2011 and 2012. Other sectors, Healthcare, Oil/Gas/Coal and Mining, and Telecom were, despite sizable donations, the subject of a lesser degree of influence, or at least, influence wasn’t sufficiently strong to exceed the importance of adherence to the ideological tenants or party line. The Defense industry in this respect is an outlier, but excreted enough influence on John B. Larson to undermine his party loyalty.