Republican Representative Peter Roskam appeared on the ever “fair and balanced” Fox and Friends this past Friday morning for another of his Fox-facilitated rants on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic partisanship. Take a look:

Roskam’s villainization of Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic efforts to achieve universal healthcare coverage is laughable.

Back in early 2009, after President Obama was sworn in, national support for healthcare reform was high. A CNN/Opinion Research Survey conducted in February 2009 found that 72% of Americans favored an increased roll for the government in healthcare, with 60% believing that the government should provide health insurance or healthcare to all Americans. In a Kaiser Foundation poll conducted the same month, 62% of respondents felt it was more important than ever to take on healthcare reform now and 72% of respondents trusted the recommendations of President Obama on healthcare reform. Even as late as June of 2009, in a Employee Benefit Research Institute poll, 83% of respondents favored a new government healthcare plan that anyone can purchase.

So Americans wanted healthcare reform and they even liked the idea of a public plan, and that left Roskam and the Reublicans in Congress with a dilemma. For political reasons, they needed Obama and the Democrats to fail so that Republican prospects would be better in the 2010 mid-term elections and beyond. And they needed to satisfy their financial backers in the big business lobbies and the healthcare companies that were opposed to reform. Last summer, Peter Roskam’s friend in the Senate, Jim DeMint, famously announced the GOP intent to have healthcare reform become President Obama’s “Waterloo”.

But how do you kill a popular program? The GOP decided to play on its strengths: to lie and sow fear and confusion about Democratic reform plans. And so they embarked on  a campaign of misinformation.

They engaged spin doctor Frank Luntz to craft talking points designed to scare the public about healthcare reform. The organized astroturf groups to spread misinformation and to fund and fan the flames of the paranoid, racist Tea Party movement. They used Republican-controlled Fox News to blare their anti-reform message 24 hours a day. And GOP members took to the airwaves themselves spouting lies about death panels, massive cuts to Medicare, uncontrolled spending, and a government takeover of healthcare complete with rationing.

Peter Roskam has been an enthusiastic participant in all of this. He’s been on local an national media constantly promulgating these lies and even used over a million dollars of taxpayer funds to blanket homes in the district with mailers – an average of about 11 per household in the 3rd quarter – as part of this partisan campaign.

Naturally, people are now suspicious.

Now the GOP has shifted to playing the role of being helpless victims of extreme Democratic partisanship. President Obama has offered a summit on healthcare in response to their pleas to be listened to and now, laughably, they are calling it a trap:

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Peter Roskam and the GOP are liars. They are lying to kill healthcare reform because they want the President to fail and because their big corporate donors don’t want reform. And if their efforts to kill reform succeed, then Americans will continue to suffer and die for lack of coverage. And they are still gleeful about what they have done.

Because the GOP have demonstrated their unwillingness to be honest participants in formulating a workable reform plan, Democrats should make every effort possible to pass reform by reconciliation, ignoring the continued GOP effort to sabotage the process.

Peter Roskam’s conduct in all of this has been reprehensible – adolescent if not sociopathic. I sincerely hope that voters will see that and replace him this fall.

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One of Congressman Peter Roskam’s big camapaign donors, Bank of America,  was all over the news today. They made news for three reasons:

  • It was revealed yesterday that Bank of America will be paying it’s investment banking employees bonuses totaling approximately $4.4 billion – an average of about $400,000 for each employee receiving a payment.
  • New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a civil lawsuit against former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and former CFO Joseph Price, accusing them of lying to shareholders and extorting the federal government surrounding its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2008. The allegation is that in order to complete its deal, Bank of America’s management misled its shareholders by not disclosing massive losses that were mounting at Merrill Lynch so that the shareholders would vote to approve the deal. Once the deal was approved, Bank of America’s management manipulated the federal government into saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they intended to back out of the deal through a clause in the Merger Agreement. You may recall that just before the deal went down, Merrill Lynch paid out a staggering $3.57 billion dollars in employee performance bonuses, even though the company was failing.  You may also remember that Ken Lewis received a $64 million retirement package when he left the company for a job well done. After the deal, B of A received a $45 billion bailout arranged by the Bush administration.
  • A Senate report report released today suggested that, despite money laundering regulations, corrupt foreign officials are still able to move “dirty” money into U.S. financial institutions. Bank of America was specifically cited for not having raised questions about movements of funds by a corrupt Angolan arms dealer now imprisoned in France.

All of this really makes me really angry.

Bank of America is a publicly traded company. That means that your 401K and mine have money invested in the bank. So when the bank pays out obscene bonuses to its executives, that money comes out of funds that would otherwise enrich the shareholders, that is, you and me. When the bank performs poorly, the bankers still get bonuses, our 401K gets the hit, and we have to pay to clean up the mess. On top of that, the Bank seems to think it is above our laws regarding money-laundering. If they get into criminal trouble on that account, we’ll be paying that bill too.

Bank of America is a significant contributor to Peter Roskam’s campaign and to his leadership PAC. They don’t give him that money out of the goodness of their hearts. They want something back, and, in my estimation, they get it. Roskam is a fierce opponent of bank regulation, even after the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. And he opposes the kind of financial tranaction tax supported by the Obama administration as well as consumer protections that protect you and me from the banks’ predatory practices.

Well, I think it is unseemly that Peter Roskam is getting money from B of A, and I think he ought to give it back. But don’t hold your breath.

Peter Roskam’s been doing his best to sow fear and doubt about President Obama’s handling of the economy. He is doing this in a cynical attempt to sell you more of the redistributive (poor to rich), deregulatory, trickle-down economic policy that brought the world to the brink of depression under President Bush. Don’t fall for it.

Here Rachel Maddow does a nice segment with economist James Galbraith of the University of Texas that cuts away the bullshit being dispensed by the GOP:

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I originally published this on May 29th, 2009. In April 2009, Peter Roskam had voted against legislation, H.R. 1664, that would have limited bonus payments to executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Today, apparently sensing political opportunity, Roskam introduced legislation to do that which he voted against:

Today, Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), Deputy Whip and member of the Ways & Means Committee, introduced The Protecting Taxpayers From Excessive Compensation Act, calling for new pay accountability rules for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Roskam’s proposed legislation would prohibit any employee of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, while the entities are under conservatorship or receivership, from being compensated more than any member of our Armed Forces.

“With historic federal spending and debt on one end, and unprecedented taxpayer exposure to Fannie and Freddie on the other, now is the time to take a step toward restoring accountability and the public trust in the use of taxpayer funds,” Roskam wrote in a letter to Financial Services Chairman Frank and Ranking Member Bachus prior to the Committee’s Employment Compensation Hearing being held this Friday. “There are few government personnel that perform a more solemn and vital duty to our country than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So long as Fannie and Freddie are effectively owned by the government, there is no reason any of their employees should be compensated more than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”

Of course this time around, Roskam is making sure that the legislation won’t affect any of the big banks and investment houses that bankroll his campaigns and enable him to continue his project of making life better for big corporations. So sadly, this won’t help your 401K. Publicly traded companies will remain free as ever to spend your retirement money on bonuses and golden parchutes for their top executives.

Guess Peter Roskam thinks we are all pretty stupid.

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Peter Roskam’s been going to a lot of trouble to publicize his media appearances lately on his House website. Of course they consist mostly of clips from Fox News, Don Wade & Roma, and Big John & Cisco. Roskam doesn’t like to talk to anyone who might ask him a serious question. He just wants a friendly outlet for his talking points – designed to keep his base in a lather about the Dems so that they won’t realize that he’s screwing them in Washington. But I appreciate the time he’s taken to organize this material so its easy for me to find.

This video was interesting and Roskam seems to be pretty proud of it. Its a clip from Fox News back in March around the time the House voted on H.R. 1586, the measure that would have imposed a 90% tax on bonuses received in 2009 by high-paid employees of companies that received TARP bailout money. Roskam voted with the majority of House members (including about half of the Republicans) to approve the measure. And then he went on Fox News to play the outraged populist while smearing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Obama administration for a mess they inherited from President Bush. I don’t think the measure ever went anywhere – just died in the Senate after AIG’s Chairman urged his employees receiving more than $100,000 to return at least half.

So was this a new Roskam we were seeing? Concerned all of a sudden about the outrages committed by big corporations at the expense of the little people back home in his district? Not so much. This was just Roskam the politician taking advantage of the moment.

Roskam showed his true colors on April 1st, when H.R. 1664, the Grayson-Himes Pay For Performance Act of 2009, came up for a vote. This was a more serious and comprehensive measure to address the issue of excessive compensation, not just for AIG but for other companies receiving bailout money as well:

The Pay for Performance Act of 2009 prohibits the payment of “unreasonable or excessive” compensation, including bonuses that are not based on performance, by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the federal home loans banks, and firms that have received funds under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The Treasury Secretary must define “unreasonable or excessive” compensation and outline what constitutes an appropriate performance-based bonus using criteria including the stability of a financial institution, ability to repay taxpayer funds, and adherence to appropriate risk management requirements. The prohibition only applies while government payments to the firms are outstanding. Firms subject to the Pay for Performance Act must report their compensation practices to the Treasury Secretary. Finally, the legislation applies bonus prohibitions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to all employment contracts.

When Roskam figured the folks at home were no longer paying attention, he dropped his faux outrage and voted against the measure. But you won’t see him promoting that fact on his website.

This was not the first time Roskam had stood up for outrageous executive pay. One of Roskam’s few floor speeches during his first term was to fight against a measure that would have given shareholders a voice in limiting the excessive pay of corporate executives. But I bet you’ll never see that video on his website.

That he uses his office to fight for unlimited executive pay is particularly sad given that Roskam has been an opponent of any efforts to raise the minimum wage for people who actually work for a living and voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act earlier this term.

Interestingly, we understand that Peter’s new Press Secretary,Daniel Conston, is an A.I.G. alum. He also worked on the failed campaigns of Fred Thompson and John McCain. Let’s hope this endeavor goes better. But what happened to Matt? Did we convert him?

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For the last few months, Peter Roskam, together with Mark Kirk and other Republicans in Congress, has been engaged in a smear campaign against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Roskam’s baseless attacks, focused on SEIU/ACORN participation in the upcoming census, are part of a long-time Republican strategy to seek political advantage by disenfranchising poor and minority voters and attempting to underrepresent them in census counts. The GOP has engaged in such tactics because its legislative program, which has worked against the interests of low-income and minority voters, has left the party unable to attract voters from these groups by legitimate means. By engaging in this behavior, Roskam has not only unfairly disparaged two fine organizations but has abused and debased the office that has been entrusted to him. He owes an apology to all concerned, including all voters in the 6th Congressional District.

On Tuesday this week, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report, requested by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, that found no evidence that ACORN had broken any laws over the past 5 years, that no voters improperly registered by ACORN had attempted to cast ballots in an election, and that ACORN had used funds received from the federal government for housing programs in accordance with funding guidelines.

A previous investigation, by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, also found no evidence of illegal activity by employees depicted in widely-publicized highly-edited videos produced by a conservative film maker as part of an effort to discredit ACORN. CRS found that, in fact, the film maker may have violated state laws.

Using a news conference and media appearances, Peter Roskam, has attempted to perpetuate the myth of a criminal conspiracy on the behalf of ACORN without offering any real evidence and has tried to spread that taint to SEIU with no basis whatsover. Here you can hear him at work on WLS-AM’s vile Don Wade & Roma Show:

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Roskam’s conduct is reprehensible and unbecoming a member of Congress.

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Peter Roskam has lately been complaining loudly to anyone who will listen about the high unemployment rate in Illinois. Roskam is trying to discredit the President and Democrats in Congress because unemployment exceeded the 8% peak projected earlier in President Obama’s term. Roskam pays lip service to the need for job growth:

“November’s continued job losses only further confirms that our economy is in serious peril, and we need to set aside partisanship and employ pro-growth policies that will create jobs.”

But when it comes time to actually vote on a jobs creation measure, partisanship wins out and Roskam votes against it.

That was what happened this past Wednesday, when the House voted on the Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010, as an amendment to H.R. 2847: Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010. Peter Roskam voted no, along with all of his obstructionist Republican colleagues.

According to Speaker Pelosi, the bill would redirect $75 billion in TARP funds to pay for highways, transit and other infrastructure; to hire or retain teachers, police and firefighters; and to subsidize loans to small businesses.

The bill also extends unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies, and Medicaid payments for people hard hit by the recession.

While Roskam loves to talk about unemployment in order to smear the President, and in order to work against legislation that his corporate sponsors oppose such as health care reform, financial regulation, and climate change legislation, Roskam demonstrates no empathy for those who have suffered job losses due to the Bush recession. You will recall that Roskam voted against unemployment benefits extension once before, back in September.

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