High Crimes and Misdemeanors

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Impeachment of the President has occurred twice in American history and was preempted in a third case by the resignation of the President. This little-used mechanism of republican government has recently been on the lips of many, fueled by an unpopular President and a special counsel investigation into the conduct of his subordinates. If a President is impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate, he or she is removed from office, but may be subject to later criminal prosecution. The constitutional grounds for impeachment are “Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Treason is defined in the Constitution itself and bribery has a clear legal meaning. But what are high crimes and misdemeanors?

I am certainly not a constitutional scholar, but the answer to this question and much more can be found in several sources. Most useful were Raoul Berger’s Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems (1974) and Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), by Cass Sunstein. Understanding the history of the language is important.

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, delegates agreed on a unitary executive – the President — who would not share executive power with other officers. But how prevent this President from becoming as oppressive as the king just overthrown? The preliminary solution was that the President would be elected for a term of four years. An abusive or incompetent President would not be re-elected. This did not satisfy skeptics, who argued that much mischief could be accomplished within four years. The final solution was to add the remedy of impeachment, a tool used from time to time by the British Parliament and American colonial legislatures to control abusive royal ministers.

Checks and balances on the potential misuse of power are everywhere built into the Constitution. The idea that Congress could remove the President through impeachment worried James Madison and others who feared the legislative branch would have too much power and that the President would end up serving at the pleasure of Congress. This concern was driven by initial drafts of the impeachment clause that included “maladministration” as a ground.

But through Madison’s arguments, the convention moved from this broad language toward the notion that the President should be impeachable only for a narrow and specified category of abuses of the public trust. Madison proposed treason and bribery as the sole grounds for impeachment. The terms “high crimes and misdemeanors” were added near the end of the debate to satisfy George Mason, who argued that treason would not reach many great and dangerous offenses. There was no discussion on what the terms meant.

There was no discussion because “high crimes and misdemeanors” had an accepted meaning at the time with which these delegates were familiar. The terms had been in use in English political life since 1642. Here in a nutshell is what these terms mean.

  • The terms high crimes and misdemeanors do not refer to criminal conduct in the ordinary sense. Criminal conduct on the part of the President is neither necessary nor sufficient for impeachment. There was no such crime as a misdemeanor when the terms were first in use – petty crimes were called trespasses. High crimes and misdemeanors may be also be criminal, such as bribery, but lots more is covered.
  • The non-criminal nature of impeachment is confirmed by other parts of the Constitution. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be subject to double jeopardy for the same offense. Because the impeachment provision declares that a convicted President can be subject to later criminal prosecution, impeachment was clearly meant as a non-criminal proceeding. Furthermore, while a criminal defendant is guaranteed the right to a trial by jury by the Sixth Amendment, a President is tried by the Senate.
  • High crimes and misdemeanors are political offenses against the state, and impeachment is designed to secure the state not punish the offender. Impeachment has been reserved for gross abuses of power or violations of the public trust. Remember that impeachment was used mainly to rid the state of the king’s corrupt ministers, who were not subject to the normal criminal process.
  • The modifier “high” refers both to the position of the offender and the seriousness of the offense. Impeachment is reserved for especially serious offenses. Only officers in high positions of trust can commit these egregious political offenses.
  • Intense political opposition and a general sense that the President is a failure are not sufficient grounds for impeachment. Nor is a sense that the President’s policies are wrong and harmful to the nation. If these points were not true, both Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush would have been impeached.
  • Because high crimes and misdemeanors are political crimes that cannot be committed by someone who does not hold high political office, they do not include reprehensible conduct committed before a President is elected, unless the conduct procured his or her election. An example might be some fraud or misconduct by the candidate that improperly influenced the election, like the Watergate bugging cover-up by President Nixon.

Arguing for the impeachment of Justice William O. Douglas in 1970, then-Congressman Gerald Ford famously asserted that “an impeachable offense” is whatever the House, with the concurrence of the Senate, “considers it to be at a given moment in history.” But this view is wrong. The terms high crimes and misdemeanors have a relatively precise meaning that was intended, in part, to limit the availability of impeachment. When considering this limit, the two actual impeachments of sitting Presidents were probably unconstitutional.

President Andrew Johnson was a Southerner who oversaw Reconstruction with a galling sympathy for the South. He was hugely unpopular for this. But his impeachment in 1868 was specifically for firing Secretary of War Stanton in violation of a statute passed by Congress to prevent him from firing Stanton. Johnson in good faith believed he had the right to fire officials who worked for him and that the statute was unconstitutional. This position was later vindicated by the Supreme Court. Johnson avoided conviction in the Senate by a single vote. This is an example of an intense disagreement between Congress and the President over matters of policy and law, which are rather frequent and are not egregious abuses of power simply because a majority of Congressmen might say they are.

When President Bill Clinton was impeached, he was a relatively popular President who had implacable opposition among Republicans. They believed him to be a liar and relentlessly sought grounds to impeach him. Recall that Kenneth Starr produced an investigatory report that focused on Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his efforts to cover it up by lying to his wife, his staff, the Cabinet and the American people. But Cass Sunstein remarks that

the impeachment of Bill Clinton is almost incomprehensible, at least if it is explored in the light of the debates in the late eighteenth century. You would have to work really hard to make a minimally plausible argument that Clinton committed an impeachable offense.

Clinton did lie under oath about his affair and this is unlawful, but it wasn’t an impeachable offense because it was not an abuse of his Presidential authority. It was a tawdry offense that practically anyone could commit.

One thing common to these two impeachments was the extreme factionalism in Congress at the time. In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton noted

the prosecution of [political offenses] will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of the parties than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.

Factionalism and passion will always be present in the midst of supercharged political issues, but in our present situation it will do nothing but get in the way of sound judgment.

Some commentators have argued that we have been too timid in the use of the impeachment mechanism. In an excellent opinion piece in the online journal Vox, published on November 30, 2017, Ezra Klein observes

There are plenty of people who simply should not be president of a nuclear hyperpower, and Trump is one of them . . . . We have grown too afraid of the consequences of impeachment and too complacent about the consequences of leaving an unfit president in office. If the worst happens, and Trump’s presidency results in calamity, we will have no excuse, no answer to give. This is an emergency. We should break the glass.

The piece concludes with a proposition at odds with the original meaning of the impeachment clause: “being extremely bad at the job of president of the United States should be enough to get you fired.”

However, events are moving quickly and there may be more to consider than bad job performance. Two days after this post was originally written, Trump’s former national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, and according to the Washington Post “court records indicate he was acting under instructions from senior Trump transition officials in his dealings with the diplomat.” Working in tandem with a foreign power to defeat a political adversary in a contest for the Presidency, and then attempting to obstruct an investigation into it, or to cover it up, is a “high crime and misdemeanor” in the true, original sense.

The best approach may be to consider only the actions said to be the basis of the potential impeachment behind an imaginary veil of ignorance about the President and his policies. It should not matter whether we agree with his policies and decisions. The sole question should be whether he has inflicted a serious political injury to the country, an abuse of power, enabled by his high office. Put another way, would we consider Trump’s actions to be a gross abuse of Presidential power if committed by a President whose policies we supported? If the answer is yes, then he should be removed.

Delegate Riley Moore and Business Tax Cuts

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On October 19, 2017 Delegate Riley Moore, who represents the Shepherdstown District in the West Virginia House of Delegates, published an opinion piece in the Charleston Daily Mail. The piece urged Congress to pass the Trump “tax reform” bill for the sake of economic growth, particularly in West Virginia. Putting aside that Del. Moore could not have known the details of the Republican tax bill on October 19 because it had not yet been made public, he extolled the virtues of various tax cuts he expected the plan to contain. In particular, Del. Moore is fond of tax cuts for business. His logic is the following. The desirable end result is more economic activity and good jobs for everyone. So far, so good. The means of achieving that desirable end result is to give over a trillion taxpayer dollars to corporations — with no strings attached — and hope that they spend this money in productive ways. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?

Republicans have creative ideas from time to time, and Del. Moore is no exception. He sponsored a bill during the last legislative session that would have created tax credits to stimulate new businesses in West Virginia. But Republicans never want to pay for their creative ideas with new tax revenue. Instead they want to cut into already existing tax revenue that would be available for other useful government work. Tax credits are one way to do this. Tax credits are tax reductions for specific taxpayers who meet the requirements, yet they are still essentially transfers of our public money in exchange for certain taxpayer behavior. Is encouraging this behavior more desirable than some other use for the tax money? The problem is that when these tax credits are proposed it is impossible to identify precisely what government program will be eliminated in exchange, or will suffer for lack of funding. The proponent of the plan doesn’t have to make the case that the tax credit is better than an environmental program, more student loans, or some other worthy project. So the public cannot intelligently answer the question.

Indiscriminate business tax cuts are far worse. Under the Republican world-view, money is best diverted from public uses to private uses. The end result is that government has less and less ability to do what we need it to do. Make no mistake, every dollar that is cut from the taxes of a business is a dollar that we could otherwise use to fund our schools, our healthcare and our public safety. Indiscriminate business tax cuts don’t even pretend to require desirable behaviors from the business like tax credits do. Business tax cuts are just giveaways of our money plain and simple. Today the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump tax plan in its present House version would permanently reduce the corporate tax rate to 20%, costing $1.5 trillion dollars in lost tax revenue.

Has anyone else noticed that Republicans only seem to be concerned about the deficit and the debt when it is “entitlement” spending programs that are under consideration? True tax reform would shift tax burdens around to be more equitable and streamline administrative procedures. But it would also find new revenues to make up for revenues lost – revenue neutrality. Trump’s tax plan as initially revealed by the House Republican leadership hardly makes an effort to claim revenue neutrality. Paul Ryan and others say that the enormous tax cuts will stimulate growth over the next decade and from this growth new tax revenues will come. No economist will stand up to support this trickle-down baloney. If the so-called “fiscal hawks” in the Republican Party don’t oppose this thinking, then we should all change the channel the next time they complain about spending programs from the Democrats.

Del. Moore’s opinion piece in The Daily Mail also spoke warmly of middle-class tax cuts and on this it is hard to disagree with him. Putting more money in the pockets of those who need a boost is exactly the kind of alternative use for tax revenues that does make sense. It will also boost the economy because middle-class taxpayers will be much more likely to spend their tax cut than the wealthy, who will save any tax cut they get.

But a business is entirely different than a middle-class taxpayer. Sure a business tax cut will free up some money for the business, but what’s to keep that money from being spent on a vacation in the tropics for the owner, or a non-productive use like paying down debt or share repurchases? Writing in the Washington Post, David Lynch notes

Several companies already have indicated that they will use excess funds to pay off debt, increase dividend payments or repurchase their own shares rather than create new jobs or raise wages. On Wall Street, the consensus is that workers will be the last in line behind shareholders, creditors and investment bankers when the extra corporate cash is distributed.

The Republican tax plan contains absolutely no requirement that a business use the tax cut for investments that will create jobs. If Del. Moore wants to have his house painted, you can be sure he doesn’t just send checks to all the painters in town in hopes that one will show up at his house.

If this country is going to give away its tax revenue to corporations for the goals of generating economic activity and creating jobs, there are ways to ensure that the money is employed to these purposes. One need look no further than the way the money from the recent West Virginia road bond referendum will be used. The goals were increased economic activity in the short term and more jobs for West Virginians. There is a linear connection between these goals and the means chosen to achieve them. Projects will begin in the current fiscal year all over the state. The West Virginia Jobs Act requires that contractors receiving these funds employ a workforce of at least 75% West Virginia residents and a proposed amendment introduced at the recent Extraordinary Session of the Legislature would put some teeth into this requirement. Of course, there can always be slips between the cup and lip. But this arrangement creates more confidence that our tax money will be used for the desired purpose than trillion dollar business tax cuts with no strings attached.

Moral Politics

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Recently, the Charleston Gazette published an editorial that I have not been able to quit thinking about. The editorial was entitled Morality, Irony and the Fate of America. It pointed out that the current Republican agenda is to take healthcare away from 20 million Americans, 170,000 of them West Virginians, and direct that money to the rich in tax cuts. It noted further that the proposed Trump tax cuts would cut one-fourth of the SNAP benefits for low-income families, undermining nutrition for 100,000 West Virginians. All with the same result of benefitting the rich. And “various other programs that keep the wolves from the door, that give people breathing space to improve their own circumstances, are at risk in the ongoing conflict.” According to the Gazette, this is not just wrong as a matter of policy. It is immoral.

Using morality as the basis for political argument has a rich history in America and elsewhere. But this is dangerous territory because each of us has a personal view of morality fashioned by family, religion, education and personal experience. When it comes to morality we are not all using the same language. As but one example, opponents of abortion use one version of morality to fuel their opposition. Freedom of choice proponents use a different version to argue for the opposite outcome. Still it seems worthwhile to discuss whether there is a moral politics and, if so, what it is. So, with no expertise in political philosophy or thinking about morality, I now venture there.

The first question is the legitimate role of government. This, of course, is a hot topic these days. Beginning from the conservative view of its proper role, government should only do the things that to be effective must be done collectively. In this category would be things like national defense, large infrastructure projects, and the tax collection system that funds both. Since government has a legal monopoly on force, then also among the things government should do is make laws for common safety and security, enforce the laws through policing and corrections, and resolve disputes through the court system.

Are social welfare programs that create a floor beneath the less fortunate among these things? Here we are talking about highly popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, SNAP benefits, unemployment compensation and disability benefits. If social welfare programs are to be undertaken at all, then it is easy to conclude that these programs are also among the things government should do.

Only government can mount social welfare programs on the scale that would be effective. Most social welfare programs operate on insurance principles that spread the risk of catastrophic outcomes and their cost throughout the whole population instead of forcing the individual victim to bear the full weight. This has to be organized collectively. There may be some among us who would say that churches and private charities could do this work but this is a pipe dream. Private charity is important but it would be quickly overwhelmed without collective government action.

Well then, does government have an obligation to devise and implement social welfare programs – to support the needy and less fortunate among its citizens? Libertarians and other followers of the “objectivist” philosophy of Ayn Rand would say no. They believe that the individual prospers by being selfish, asking for no help from others and giving none.

This objectivist view is inconsistent with the Judeo-Christian philosophy of action and with the teachings of every organized religion. Religious leaders whose business it is to consider moral issues consistently say that helping others in need is a moral imperative. A recent letter to the editor of the Gazette from the Executive Director of the West Virginia Council of Churches urged our Congressional representatives to maintain their support for SNAP benefits on religious grounds.

Then there is the fact that every modern government recognizes this imperative, those in Western Europe more than others. Social welfare programs became more common as the phenomenon of empathy spread in society. But mere empathy withers in the face of the high cost of acting on it. As New York Times columnist David Brooks has argued, those we recognize as having a strong moral compass have sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. Whatever the source of this moral sense, when it comes to social welfare most people have it. It would be difficult to find a political leader in any country, except perhaps our own, willing to deny that government has a moral obligation to build some sort of support system for those in need.

Without anything to back this up other than a visceral feel, I believe that our sense of moral imperative, and therefore the legitimacy of government social welfare programs, is highest when dealing with basic needs. Wide swaths of society can rally around programs that eliminate or reduce hunger, but far fewer around programs that, say, provide recreational opportunities. In the high legitimacy category I would also put minimizing pain and disease, homelessness, the infirmities of old age, and responding to natural disasters. But certainly there can be a lot of debate around what we are morally compelled to do.

Unlike the debate about abortion, there is no countervailing moral argument behind the current Republican opposition to Medicaid and SNAP benefits. Medicaid expansion, and even the basic idea of Medicaid itself, has been threatened in the fever to repeal Obamacare. How, or if, we manage health insurance for those able to afford it is a different question entirely from whether we provide it for those who can’t. The fact that Congressional Republicans have wrapped the two issues together in the repeal effort demonstrates that the argument to undermine Medicaid cannot stand on its own.

When Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and their surrogates offer any reason behind their hostility to Medicaid and SNAP benefits it is a fiscal, not a moral reason. They say we must cut back on these benefits because they are growing at a rate that is unsustainable over the long run. I don’t pretend to know whether this is true but it seems unlikely we couldn’t find some adjustments to make them sustainable. What is perfectly obvious is that the people who receive these benefits are in need now — today. The moral imperative for government to act should not yield in favor of some cool assessment of future bookkeeping. Doing what should be done may not be easy, but that is often the nature of moral choices.

 

 

Rep. Alex Mooney’s Feckless Vote on Healthcare

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On May 4, 2017, the United States House of Representatives voted to pass the American Health Care Act (AHCA) by a narrow margin of 217 to 213, sending the bill to the Senate for deliberation. This Bill would repeal the majority of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) known as Obamacare, a promise made by Donald Trump and numerous Republican legislators during the 2016 campaign.

It is hard to describe in measured words the destructive impact the AHCA would have on West Virginia. Obamacare permitted the expansion of Medicaid benefits to large numbers of uninsured West Virginians. Because of this expansion we made great progress insuring low income, working adults, reducing the uninsured rate from 17% of the population to 5%. Repealing this feature of the law will cause 175,000 West Virginians to be uninsured once again.

One effect of the loss of health insurance is that people who need to see a doctor simply won’t. These people are at risk that their health status and earning capability will decline. Then there is opioid addiction, which has reached epidemic proportions in West Virginia. In 2016 approximately 20,000 people were treated for substance abuse disorder under the Medicaid expansion. This treatment will evaporate under AHCA. Some of the newly uninsured will get emergency treatment for illness and injury at hospitals and clinics. This is called uncompensated care.

When there is no insurance, who actually pays for uncompensated care? The people receiving care could pay out of their pockets. More likely, state and local governments or the hospitals and clinics themselves could be forced to absorb the cost. One projection estimates that West Virginia hospitals would be asked to provide $135 million more in uncompensated care annually.

Numerous national trade associations and interest groups operating in the healthcare space strongly opposed the AHCA. These included the AARP, The American Medical Association, The American Hospital Association, and Catholic Health Association of the United States. Even conservative groups such as Heritage Action and the Cato Institute opposed the AHCA.

In a series of three letters beginning in January 2017, two West Virginia Governors and the West Virginia Cabinet Secretary for Health and Human Services warned our Congressional delegation about the consequences of a repeal of Obamacare. On January 9, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin wrote to House majority leader Kevin McCarthy and the West Virginia delegation, noting that West Virginia’s population is one of the most rural and oldest in the nation, with poor health indicators. He said, “Federal funding must be maintained or West Virginia’s health care infrastructure will collapse.”

On February 15, Governor Jim Justice wrote a number of U.S Senators and sent copies to Rep. Mooney and the others in the West Virginia delegation. Justice said “Repeal of Medicaid expansion would eliminate up to $900 million from West Virginia’s healthcare economy annually” leading to the potential loss of 16,000 jobs.

None of these entreaties had the desired effect on Rep. Mooney — he voted in support of the AHCA. His official statement began as follows: “Today, I was proud to vote for the American Health Care Act. I pledged to voters in the Second District that I would vote to repeal and replace Obamacare and today I fulfilled that pledge.” His statement pointed to the “collapsing market” for health insurance and asserted that the free market would provide better options for people who can afford insurance, but offered not one word concerning the large swath of West Virginians who will be rendered uninsured or the impact of repeal on West Virginia’s economy.

Why would our Congressman vote for the AHCA in the face of unrebutted information that it would devastate the lives of many West Virginians and deal another blow to our economy? One answer is to take him at his word – he promised to do it and he was determined to keep his promise. While there is something to be said for keeping promises, the moral value of doing so here is petty in comparison to the moral imperative to protect hundreds of thousands of people who would lose healthcare coverage.

There is a less attractive explanation that may be closer to the truth. A vote in favor of the AHCA was demanded by President Trump and the House Republican hierarchy, and Rep. Mooney did not have the fibre to oppose them despite the cost to his constituents. More likely he was happy to join with them for ideological reasons despite the costs to his constituents.

As for being “proud” of his position on the AHCA, Rep. Mooney certainly has not acted like it. In March when he and Senator Joe Manchin met with constituents at a state Congressional reception in Washington, D.C., many of the attendees aggressively questioned Rep. Mooney about the AHCA. Mooney fled the room when he could no longer provide answers. Subsequently, he was quoted in the Martinsburg Journal claiming that these people were “professionally trained radicalists.” But in the comments submitted by readers of the Journal’s original March 11, 2017 article about the incident, Sara Le Rana said:

I was in attendance as an interested citizen. I WAS NOT paid or a “professionally trained radicalist.” I’m uncertain what that is. Mooney RAN, not walked, he RAN rather than stay and do his job. Manchin listened, encouraged the guests closer to him. Mooney refused to listen or stay to respond in a respectful manner . . . . The dude ran.

This evasive behavior on the part of Rep. Mooney has been typical of his lack of responsiveness, and that of his staff, in large part around the healthcare issue. West Virginians deserve better than this.

2018 cannot come soon enough.

Bank Regulation and Bubbles

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The bubbles referred to here aren’t in Champagne or a luxurious bath. They are the rapid inflation of value in an asset class – maybe stocks or single-family homes – to unsustainable levels inevitably followed by rapid, uncontrolled deflation. The unmistakable pop. Those my age have muddled through a number of these bubbles. There was the incredible run-up in value of tech stocks in the 1990s. Then came the sub-prime mortgage lending bubble that popped in 2007.

Bubbles are important to consider these days because a central brake on the conduct of banks in contributing to bubbles, called the Dodd-Frank Act, is under attack by the de-regulators in Congress. Banks and bankers provide a crucial function in our economy. We need them to extend credit, which is the lubricant of the economy, but to do so in a prudent manner. Unfortunately, like most every industry, the banking industry is not self-regulating. Left to govern itself completely, the industry will engage in excessive and risky behavior. This has happened time and again and is just the nature of things.

Man Controlling TradeThe image to the right is a statue called Man Controlling Trade installed outside the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. It was commissioned in 1937, before the United States had completely crawled out of the Great Depression. Most historians agree that among the causes of the Depression was the credit banks granted for speculative investment in stocks. This was followed by the stock market crash of 1929, which led to the failure of 9,000 banks. This risky behavior with depositors’ money had been completely unregulated. The statue’s powerful horse is meant to represent the danger of uncontrolled economic behavior.

To bridle this risky bank behavior, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933. The principal feature of this law was a separation of commercial banking from investment banking. Commercial banks, which took in deposits and made loans, were no longer allowed to underwrite or deal in securities. This regulated environment continued until 1999 when it was lifted by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed banks, securities firms and insurance companies to affiliate with one another through common holding companies.

The conventional wisdom is that deregulation under Gramm-Leach-Bliley led to the sub-prime mortgage crash in 2007. This is incorrect. The two portions of Glass-Steagall that Gramm-Leach-Bliley repealed had nothing to do with the issuance or purchase of mortgage-backed securities. Banks had been issuing mortgages, securitizing them with other financial instruments, and buying mortgage-backed securities for years before Gramm-Leach-Bliley. But unfortunately there was no regulatory structure that prevented banks from lowering underwriting standards on the underlying mortgage loans as the market overheated. This lack of regulatory control led, as it always does, to excessively risky lending and a bubble.

The Great Recession that began in 2007 spurred the adoption of the Dodd-Frank Act, a massive piece of legislation. Dodd-Frank was designed to reorganize government financial oversight and give greater transparency to the finance industry. It sought to address the notion that some financial institutions are “too big to fail” and end taxpayer bailouts of failed banks. It also sought to protect the consumer from abusive conduct in the finance industry. But it has been a regulatory nightmare. One commentator has noted that the Act requires regulators to create 243 rules, conduct 67 studies, and issue 22 periodic reports.

Dodd-Frank has been on the books only seven years and it is too soon to know how successful it has been and can be. We do know, however, that there has been no financial bubble since it was enacted. Nevertheless, Rep. Alex Mooney (WV 2nd) and others whose mission is to dismantle anything created during the Obama administration want a complete repeal of Dodd-Frank. Mr. Mooney is now on the House Financial Services Committee where he can do some real damage.

Rep. Mooney recently met with roundtables of community bankers in Charleston and in the Eastern Panhandle. The bankers complained that Dodd-Frank was designed for huge banks and doesn’t “scale down” to banks the size of most in this state. They claimed that over-regulation has raised their costs and made it harder and more costly to make loans. Maybe this is a legitimate complaint for small community banks, but what regulated industry ever believes that the hand of the regulator lays upon it too lightly? There are even some in the banking industry who argue that  community banks are “too small to succeed” because they cannot generate the return on assets of larger banks, a problem that cannot be blamed on Dodd-Frank. Whatever their regulatory burden, community banks do not seem to be hobbled in West Virginia – auto loans and home equity loans are a booming business now.

Michael Barr, University of Michigan Law School professor and a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Act, says that the U.S. financial system is “incredibly healthy” in comparison to 2008 and presently in other countries. But not if you listen to House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling (R, Tex.), who blames a slow recovery from the Great Recession on Dodd-Frank. Hensarling has championed The Financial Choice Act, which would gut a number of important Dodd-Frank regulations.  This bill was recently reported out of his Committee on a completely partisan vote of 34-26.

Both sides of this issue have decent arguments. But considering the incredibly damaging effects of bursting asset bubbles, I for one am willing to risk a little sluggishness in bank lending in exchange for solid controls on bank behavior. Perhaps when the Financial Choice Act reaches the House floor, or the Senate, better recognition of the virtues of control will prevail.

Rep. Alex Mooney Ignores the Panhandle’s Economic Needs

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Let’s face it. Panhandle voters did themselves no favor when they elected Alex Mooney as West Virginia’s 2nd District Congressman. Characteristics we’d like to see in a Congressman – independence of thought, sensitivity to constituent needs, flexibility in problem solving – appear to be lacking in Rep. Mooney. His actions and statements show him to be one dimensional. Whatever outrage President Trump proposes for the environment with the false promise of putting coal miners back to work is just fine by him.

For proof of this I invite anyone to review Rep. Mooney’s website for his public statements and news releases. Don’t expect to find any evidence of initiative in Congress meaningful to the Panhandle. Instead, a favorite Mooney posting is a “statement” lauding something President Trump has done and repeating tired Republican attacks on the Obama administration. Here is one issued on March 28, 2017:

Today, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that rolls back devastating [Clean Power Plan] regulations on American energy production. . . . . This Executive Order is just one of the many ways President Trump is standing up for West Virginia energy production and I am proud to stand with him in this fight. For eight years, former President Barack Obama waged an all-out war on coal and West Virginia values. As unemployment skyrocketed and coal mines closed, President Obama and his left-wing supporters focused on executing on his promise to bankrupt the coal industry.

Earlier, Rep. Mooney celebrated President Trump’s roll-back of the Obama administration’s Stream Protection Rule, which was designed to blunt the harmful effects of mountaintop removal mining. Based on wildly inflated figures from the National Mining Association, Rep. Mooney claimed that the Rule would have cost 70,000 coal mining jobs. Pretty soon Rep. Mooney will have to come up with some ideas that actually move us forward, instead of ritually dismantling what was done during the previous administration. But don’t hold your breath. This may take a while.

Six of eight counties in the Eastern Panhandle are part of the 2nd District – Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hardy, Hampshire and Pendleton. According to Census Bureau estimates, the 2016 total population of these six counties was 231,766, making up 37% of the 2nd District. Simply from the standpoint of the total votes in the Panhandle, you would expect Rep. Mooney to pay some attention to our economic needs.

There is no coal mining in the Eastern Panhandle. Our economy is heavily weighted toward white-collar jobs in healthcare and government, tourism and agriculture. Our conservation and environmental interest groups are thriving. A ruined environment, fueled by Big Coal and science-denial, directly harms our means of achieving prosperity and our enjoyment of life. Rep. Mooney’s dogged support of the coal industry is completely out of touch with our needs. In fact, it is out of touch with the needs of the entire state. Coal mining jobs make up only a minor slice of West Virginia’s current employment. Counting generously, there are 20,000 miners employed in West Virginia out of total employment of 740,000.

Instead of legislation to improve our economic prosperity, Rep. Mooney seems more interested in right-wing social legislation. He has twice introduced a Bill called the Life at Conception Act (H.R. 816), and has introduced a resolution (H. Res. 514) imploring the states to permit individuals to disregard laws and regulations on the ground of their personal religious beliefs. In the 114th Congress none of the Bills introduced by Rep. Mooney became law.

Certainly, there is more to being an effective legislator than the number of your Bills that are passed. But Rep. Mooney was one of those Congressmen who wouldn’t meet his constituents in face-to-face town hall meetings to explain what he’s doing for us. No doubt he was afraid to hear the pent up anger in his District. There is still time in his current term for Rep. Mooney to demonstrate that he understands the Panhandle’s economic needs. But it is hard to be optimistic.

Rep. Alex Mooney Deals a Blow to West Virginia’s Mountain Streams

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Rep. Alex Mooney (WV 2nd) is celebrating the demise of the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule. This Rule, made effective in the waning days of President Obama’s tenure, would have created a buffer zone between mountain streams and mine sites and would have protected drinking water in accordance with modern technology. The Rule would have mainly affected mining done by mountaintop removal where mining refuse is pushed into stream valleys. But Rep. Mooney and his Big Coal backers claim that the Rule would have killed over 70,000 jobs in the coal industry. Unfortunately, Rep. Mooney’s grasp of coal economics and employment numbers is feeble, perhaps influenced by his ideological impulse to dance on the grave of the Obama Administration.

The scientific evidence of the harm done by mountaintop removal with valley fills is unassailable. In January 2010, Science Magazine published an article detailing that harm, written and researched by twelve preeminent scientists including one from WVU. They found that burial of headwater streams by valley fills causes permanent loss of ecosystems. Stream biodiversity and water quality suffer. As they emerge from valley fills, mountain streams are saturated with sulfate, calcium, magnesium and other harmful ions. These persist even after mine-site reclamation. Groundwater samples from domestic supply wells have higher levels of mine-derived chemicals than well water from unmined areas. The article, written before Obama’s stream protection Rule, concludes

mine-related contaminants persist in streams well below valley fills, forests are destroyed, headwater streams are lost, and biological diversity is reduced; all of these demonstrate that [mountaintop removal with valley fill] causes significant environmental damage despite regulatory requirements to minimize impacts.

Balanced against this certain environmental harm is Rep. Mooney’s rather hysterical claim that huge numbers of West Virginia coal jobs would have been lost under the Rule. It should surprise no one that Rep. Mooney’s numbers come straight from the National Mining Association. That group’s analysis asserted that as many as 77,000 jobs might be lost nationwide under the worst scenario, but possibly far fewer under more likely scenarios. Those are not all West Virginia jobs, or even Appalachian jobs. And there is good reason to doubt the bona fides of NMA’s numbers because they do not take into account the reclamation and compliance jobs that would be created by the Rule.

Congress required the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to estimate the proposed Rule’s impact on employment, not just on coal jobs. In a document entitled SPR Myths vs, Facts, it debunks industry claims that between 40,000 and 77,000 jobs would be lost:

The final [Stream Protection Rule] will not have an adverse impact on jobs. The regulatory impact analysis (RIA) for the rule estimates overall that employment will show [an annual average] increase of 156 full time jobs. Where coal production is unprofitable under market conditions, jobs are predicted to decline by an average annual aggregate of 124 fulltime jobs. This will be more than offset by an average annual gain of 280 fulltime jobs needed to comply with the rule where mining remains profitable, such as additional jobs like heavy machine operators for materials placement and water sampling professionals. For purposes of comparison, the Energy Information Administration reports that total coal industry employment in 2015 was equal to 65,971, decreasing 12% from 2014.

In a February 22, 2017 opinion piece, the Morgan Messenger took Senators Capito and Manchin to task for claiming that rolling back the Rule would save state coal jobs. “They don’t do our state any favors by pretending to have turned back the loss of coal jobs,” the Messenger said, noting that coal jobs have been declining for years due to economic factors unrelated to environmental regulations. Rep. Mooney is guilty of the same and more. By accepting and further promoting the coal industry’s false narrative about a “war on coal” he delays the reckoning we in West Virginia must have about replacing coal jobs and severance revenues. He keeps us in the perpetual coal rut. The roll back of the Stream Protection Rule is no cause for him to celebrate.