Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the gay chair of the House Financial
Services Committee, has played a key role in responding to the Wall
Street crisis.
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By Chris Johnson
Friday, October 03, 2008
As stocks fluctuate on Wall Street and financial institutions collapse, the nation’s eyes have been on the only openly gay man in Congress this week as he helped lead efforts to contain the financial crisis.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is chair of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the key lawmakers that worked on a proposed $700 billion effort to relieve the crisis.
But while Frank and other congressional leaders announced last weekend that lawmakers had come to agreement on the buyout legislation, the House rejected the bill Monday, 228-205.
At Blade deadline, no legislation addressing the financial crisis had passed either chamber of Congress.
Dan Pinello, a gay City University of New York government professor, said Frank’s role in tackling the crisis has given him considerable attention.
“He’s, at the moment, probably one of the better known members of Congress who wouldn’t otherwise be all that well-known except for this extraordinary event,” he said.
Bruce Seaman, a gay Georgia State University economics professor, said Frank has reached across the aisle and been “a coherent and very informed spokesman on economic issues for Democrats.”
“His basic economic philosophy is pragmatic — clearly understanding the vitality of free markets and decentralized decision-making, but recognizing the importance of sensible regulatory constraints,” Seaman said.
Citing Frank’s opinion piece on the housing crisis published March 9 in the Washington Post, Seaman said Frank had been viewed as “being too eager to throw federal money at the problem,” but in retrospect his warning from earlier this year “looks remarkably prescient.”
Pinello noted, however, that to evaluate Frank’s performance based on the House bill that foundered Monday would suggest that Frank has not been effective.
“Did they accomplish want they wanted to achieve?” Pinello said. “Clearly that didn’t happen in the House of Representatives.”
Seaman also said Frank and other lawmakers have been criticized for their relationship with mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were placed under federal control last month.
“Barney Frank (and other Democrats) have been criticized for having been too close to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and failing to fully appreciate and limit the excessive risks they were taking in quest of the goal of expanded home ownership in the U.S.,” Seaman said.
Pinello also questioned whether Frank’s caustic wit and abrasive personality was a factor in lawmakers voting down Monday the proposed legislation.
“Some people are saying Barney Frank’s sense of humor was inappropriately used at some points,” he said. “It had the effect of antagonizing people who ended up voting against the bill.”
Frank has made a number of quips in the past month about those he said have contributed to the financial crisis.
The lawmaker criticized some Republicans at a news conference Monday after the House bill failed, citing speculation that 12 House Republicans voted against the measure because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi railed against the “failed economic leadership” of the past eight years.
“I’ll make an offer,” Frank said. “Give me those 12 people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they’ll now think about the country.”
And when Republican presidential nominee John McCain briefly suspended his campaign last month to take part in negotiations on the proposed legislation, Frank called the move a “Hail Mary” for McCain’s campaign.
“It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys,” Frank said.
Pinello said that Frank’s comments “might have all been just an excuse” for House Republicans to vote against legislation and “they would have come up with something else otherwise if that hadn’t occurred.”
Pinello said Frank has “not necessarily” acted in a partisan manner in trying to get legislation passed.
“He did take on a Republican bill that came from a Republican White House … and made it, after modifications of course, his own, in a way,” Pinello said. “So it wasn’t certainly absolutely partisan.
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