Darrell Issa’s personal Goldman rep arranged Elizabeth Warren perjury showdown

Darrell Issa’s personal Goldman rep arranged Elizabeth Warren perjury showdown
Lucas O’Connor
Courage Campaing
August 26, 2011

There are more and more wrinkles in the troubling saga of the former Goldman Sachs VP hired by Issa to protect Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms from accountability on the Hill. It now looks as though he was also personally responsible for the scheduling disagreement between Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Patrick McHenry that quickly mushroomed into a debacle of McHenry twice accusing Warren of perjury.

Goldman Sachs has dropped millions on lobbying Congress and now it looks like they've gotten themselves a mole as well, courtesy of Darrell Issa. Issa and McHenry, of course, have themselves been the beneficiaries of generous campaign donations from giant financial firms throughout their careers.

~ While on that subject, the Goldman exec in question claimed last week that he had change his name to honor his family's Transylvanian heritage. Submitted with nothing but amazement, it appears that heritage is about service to an Hungarian fascit military dictator who was an early ally of Hitler's regime in Germany. So... there's that.

~ Some credit where it's due -- Issa has been ahead of the curve on government giving up. Back in January, he proposed not just ending the HAMP program designed to help struggling homeowners, but replacing it with nothing. His plan was to just spend the money instead on... well... nothing. Now it looks like $30 billion originally earmarked for foreclosure relief will be spent on nothing, because congressional Republicans aren't interested in rerouting the money.

~ New numbers show that in the last few years, private companies have seen record profits per employee, indicating that these businesses can but are not hiring. The profit rate has spiked 12% during the same period that Darrell Issa and others have continued insisting that supply-side economic policies of giving more money to private companies would spur job growth...

Darrell Issa (R-Goldman Sachs): Most of the time, when wealthy people are elected to office, they put their investments into a blind trust

Darrell Issa (R-Goldman Sachs)
Courage Campaign
Rick Jacobs

Most of the time, when wealthy people are elected to office, they put their investments into a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest.

But Rep. Darrell Issa -- one of the richest people in America -- didn't do that. He still personally manages hundreds of millions of dollars, and it seems to drive a lot of his official decisions.

Tell Issa to focus on his full time job as a congressman, not on managing his money. Put your money in a blind trust or resign from Congress.

A new report finds that Darrell Issa hired a Goldman Sachs Vice President to run interference on new Wall Street regulations... but only after he changed his name. It's the latest in Issa's long string of conflicts of interest and corporate favoritism, a list that's gotten so long that the New York Times put the problem on the front page this week.

We already know that Issa-as-Chairman is bad news. He asked corporate lobbyists and industry groups to set his committee's agenda, cancelled a hearing when facts didn't fit his narrative, and still won't disclose what lobbyists he meets with. He's steered earmarks to fund improvements around his investment properties, and he's a big fan of South Carolina's taxpayer-funded $900 million corporate handout -- in exchange for the corporation's promise to cut employee wages and benefits.

Stop insulting your constituents and America. Stop spending your spare time looking for personal investment opportunities in his laws and Oversight investigations. The credibility of his committee -- and Issa himself -- requires that he move his money to blind trust now.

Issa has spent his entire life trying to play by special rules, and that hasn't changed just because he has more power now. This week, we've seen once again that so long as Issa is trying to legislate and turn a profit at the same time, he just isn't able to keep them separate. And that's a huge problem.

It's high time that Darrell Issa get focused on responsible oversight and assure us that he isn't still trying to work angles for his own benefit.