Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
The real political energy is always behind Wall Street and the big polluters. That’s where the big money is. … When you hear the refrain about “burdensome regulations” … it’s almost always a cover for the deregulatory agenda of two narrow interests: Wall Street and the big corporate polluters. – From Captured by Sen. Sheldon Whiteside
In his book Captured, The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse writes about a 2015 Senate hearing on “overregulation” held by Sen. Ted Cruz.
One of the witnesses at the hearing was a small-business owner from Chicago who ran a tax preparation service. The woman complained about the burden of federal regulation that required her to obtain a license before preparing other people’s tax returns.
Whitehouse pointed out that despite having the woman appear to explain her specific situation, Cruz never filed a bill to overturn that regulation, even though the Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn agency regulations.
Whitehouse further explained that, while no senator had made any legislative effort to repeal or correct the regulation the woman said was negatively affecting her, there were more than 100 legislative attacks and votes trying to repeal environmental protections a year since the GOP took control of the House of Representatives in 2010. (The book was published in 2017)
There had also been repeated votes to undo the Dodd-Frank legislation’s restraints on Wall Street that were put in place after the Great Recession in 2008.
Musings of a Nobody 