Courtesy of Pam Martens
Senator Pat Toomey
The Senate Banking Committee will convene today to conduct confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden’s nominees to fill two key Wall Street watchdog posts: Gary Gensler to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Rohit Chopra as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
As a result of Democrats taking control of the Senate, Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, is the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Curiously, however, the prior Republican Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, the mild-mannered Mike Crapo of Idaho, is not the Ranking Member of the Committee. He has been replaced by a man far more likely to engage in aggressive Koch-speak, Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. (Toomey was all set to become the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee but then things went south in Georgia and Democrats picked up two additional seats in the Senate.)
What exactly is Koch-speak? It’s the manner in which politicians form their sentences in public when they are beholding to corporate money from the Koch network of billionaires and assorted grifters. Koch-speak is an acquired art. Crapo didn’t master it so he’s out; Toomey is in.
Koch-speak requires the ability to cloak one’s fealty to corporate greed and their lobbyists’ demands for de-regulation by sprinkling one’s sentences with words like “free markets,” “liberty,” and “limited government.”
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, over the course of his political career, Toomey’s largest donor to either his Campaign Committee and/or Leadership PAC has been the Club for Growth, which has provided more than $1.26 million to Toomey’s coffers. That’s more than 7 times the amount of Toomey’s second and third largest donors, the hedge fund Elliott Management and Goldman Sachs. Toomey served as the President of Club for Growth from 2005 to 2009.
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