Chris Dodd: The Senator From Bank of America
Chris Dodd, the US senator who introduced the mortgage bailout bill this week, has received approximately $70,000 in campaign contributions from Bank of America in the last year-and-a-half, Tim Carney reports in the Washington Examiner.* The mortgage bill would allow banks such as Bank of America and mortgage lenders like Countrywide, which BofA is in the process of acquiring, to push their worst performing loans onto government agencies. It is such a give away to mortgage laden banks that it is being mocked by Republican staffers as "the Bank of America bill on steroids."
Dodd, of course, chairs the senate's banking committee. It may seem obvious that the banking committee chairman would receive lots of money from one of the nation's largest banks. But it wasn't always so. Richard Shelby, who headed the banking committee while Republicans controlled the senate, received only $7,000 from Bank of America employees during his four-year chairmanship. When the going was good, no one needed to own a senator.
But these are difficult times for banks, especially banks buying the nations largest home lender. And so Bank of America has opened up its coffers to buy a little influence on Capitol Hill.
Bank of America PAC money behind Dodd's Countrywide loan
*Full disclosure: Blah, blah, blah. You already guessed it.