Sunlight Live to cover Tuesday's Senate hearing on finance reform
By Stevie Mathieu Jun 27 2011 5:41 p.m.Lawmakers on the Senate's Banking Committee will discuss Tuesday how to reform the housing market, focusing on smaller banks' access to the secondary mortgage market. This market includes mortgage-backed securities, the complex financial arrangements that helped topple the U.S. Economy a few years ago.
Sunlight Live will provide a video stream of the 10 a.m. hearing and blog during the event to provide more context to this discussion, including insights into the financial connections that could influences the senators on the committee and the witnesses testifying on the topic. Some of the listed witnesses have made campaign contributions and have political ties to senators on the banking committee.
Witnesses at Tuesday's hearing will include Jack Hastings, CEO of The Peoples Bank, Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute, Christopher Dunn, vice president of South Shore Saving Bank, and Peter Skillern, executive director of the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina.
In 2009 and 2010, Hartings gave $2,160 to Independent Community Bankers of America, a political action committee that gave $10,000 last year to Banking Committee member Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO).
Pinto, in addition to serving as a fellow at the AEI, is also the CEO of the Trust in Small Business political action committee. This conservative PAC gave more than $23,000 last year to Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois who also serves on the banking committee.
The Senate Banking Committee's Chairman Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, received more than $67,000 in 2010 from banking giant JPMorgan Chase, making it Johnson's most generous campaign financier that year.
The ranking committee member, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, also receives campaign contributions from the financial industry. The largest chunk of money given to Shelby's campaign committee in 2010 came from the securities and investments industry to the tune of nearly $750,000, making him the Senate's largest recipient of campaign contributions from finance and credit companies last year.
To learn more about the political connections behind this debate as it happens, tune in at 10 a.m. Tuesday on sunlightlive.com.
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