Biden Names Ex-Goldman Sachs Banker Turned Wall Street Foe Gary Gensler to Head SEC
President-elect Joe Biden is set to nominate Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs banker who chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration’s early years, as the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Biden announced the pick Monday, along with his plan to name Rohit Chopra as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Chopra, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, is considered an ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He helped launch the agency in 2008 and served as deputy director during the Obama administration.
Gensler was fiercely critical of Wall Street during his time at the CFTC and fought for more regulation of the derivatives business, surprising some in finance and the administration. President Obama declined to nominate him for a second term and Gensler was replaced by Timothy Massad, who was seen as far less threatening to Wall Street firms.
Gensler has many critics on Wall Street, including inside Goldman, and many former Obama administration officials have been critical of his approach, saying he sought blunt, unilateral regulation where nuance and international cooperation were more appropriate. Other critics say that despite Gensler’s enthusiasm for reining in Wall Street’s derivatives business he was ultimately ineffective because he was outsmarted and outflanked by Obama administration officials who wanted a lighter regulatory touch.
Republican leader of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry (R-NC), praised the nomination on Monday.
“Gary’s acceptance of financial technology and cryptocurrency is a welcome change from many Democrats who avoid innovation just because they don’t understand it,” McHenry said.
Democrats Again Consider Bailing Out the Wealthy with Billions in Tax Cuts
Democrats are again considering legislation to provide their wealthy blue state donors with billions by ending the cap on a tax deduction.
As President-elect Joe Biden has released his $1.9 trillion Chinese coronavirus relief package that offers $1,400 stimulus checks to working and middle class Americans, rather than the $2,000 checks that President Trump had requested, Democrats are resurrecting their goal of providing tax breaks to the wealthiest of Americans, mostly concentrated in coastal blue states.
The plan once again being considered by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee would end the cap on the SALT tax deduction that was strictly limited by Trump in 2017. Ending the cap over the next two years would give millionaires and billionaires a massive windfall while costing about $136 billion.
The Daily Poster contrasted the elimination of the cap to the cost of stimulus checks:
If Democrats choose to permanently repeal the cap, it would cost almost $600 billion — or three times the amount it would cost to boost the $1,400 checks to $2,000. [Emphasis added]
…
$2,000 checks would target help to the bottom 60 percent of income earners, who would see an average increase of 11 percent in their annual income, and it would be a particularly big income boost for the poorest Americans. By contrast, the SALT deduction would mostly benefit wealthy households, with the top 5 percent of households receiving over 80 percent of the benefit. [Emphasis added]
The top 1 percent of households would get roughly 60 percent of all the benefits of a SALT cap repeal, which translates to “an average tax cut of more than $33,000,” wrote Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center. [Emphasis added]
In March 2020, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote in an analysis that ending the cap would ensure that “the average household making over $1 million would receive over $100,000.”
“Households making less than $50,000 would receive almost no benefit from repealing or raising the SALT cap,” the analysis stated.
As Breitbart News reported in May 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sought to include the elimination of the cap in the HEROES Act.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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