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Watt, House GOP Leaders, Plan Sneak Attack On Ethics Office

Susan Crabtree | July 21, 2011, 12:23PM

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC)

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), with the help of Republicans leaders, is launching a sneak attack on the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the only quasi-independent ethics watchdog policing the behavior of members of Congress.

Watt, a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus, may be looking for some retribution against the office for investigating him last year. Along with a bipartisan group of several other members, Watt was part of a wide-ranging OCE probe into the propriety of holding fundraising events with big players in the financial sector within days -- or even on the very day -- of a vote on the Wall Street reform bill. He and the other members were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing but not before the investigation leaked to the press and he and the other members made "under investigation" headlines.

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Topics: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Ethics, Ethics Panel, John Boehner, Mel Watt, Nancy Pelosi, Office of Congressional Ethics

Office of Congressional Ethics

Reports: OCE Probe Focused On Fundraisers, Auto Dealer Exemption

Rachel Slajda | June 16, 2010, 12:14PM

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC)

The House Office of Congressional Ethics investigation into eight lawmakers is focusing on fundraisers held in the two days before the final vote on financial reform legislation, according to news reports.

According to The Hill, the OCE is specifically looking into a fundraiser held for Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) two days before he pulled an amendment that could have hurt certain auto dealers.

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Topics: Financial Reform, Lobbyists, Mel Watt, Office of Congressional Ethics

Berkshire-Hathaway

Barney Frank Rousts Credit Rating Firm For...Being Too Negative?

Moe Tkacik | April 9, 2009, 5:14PM

Credit rating agencies are coming under fire from Congress again -- but this time it's for being too pessimistic. After Moody's issued an unprecedented across-the-board negative credit outlook on all American cities and towns yesterday, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank issued his own negative assessment of Moody's, and scheduled a hearing to investigate:

I am troubled by the action of Moody's Investors Service to issue a negative outlook across the board on America's municipalities, which could raise the interest rates on cities and towns making it more expensive to borrow funds for infrastructure improvements.

On the face of it, this seems like a perverse round of messenger shooting. But last March, as cities and towns across the country started getting flooded with demands for huge payouts rooted in arcane details of "swap" contracts they'd inked with banks that managed their bond offerings, Frank discovered something truly perverse: the public sector was being scammed on multiple fronts by the investment banks underwriting their bond offerings -- and the profits directly fed the disastrous trade of risky mortgage-linked credit default swaps that hastened the financial meltdown.

The scheme started at the credit ratings agencies, which keep two sets of standards for grading corporate and municipal bonds -- and municipalities are held to a much higher standard, as Frank explained in a hearing using Moody's own data:

I will be giving out this chart, sectoral breakdown of Moody's rated issuers and defaulters, 1970 to 2000, general obligation bonds, there it is. Number of issuers 14,775. Number of defaults, 0.