U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Calls on President-Elect Trump to Keep His Promise to Make Washington Work for Wisconsin, Not Wall Street
Close the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington
“Don’t appoint foxes to guard the hen house.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin today sent a letter to President-Elect Trump, calling on him to keep his promise to make Washington work for Wisconsin by closing the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington and not appointing “foxes to guard the hen house.”
“You have made a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington by reducing the influence of special interests in government and expressed deep concerns about the influence of Wall Street over government. I share these concerns because I know that financial conflicts of interest and a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington created a culture of weak oversight that allowed excessive risk-taking at Wall Street banks to flourish at the expense of hard working, middle-class Americans,” Senator Baldwin wrote. “Given that you expressed skepticism of the relationship between Washington and Wall Street, I urge you to not appoint foxes to guard the hen house. The people of Wisconsin cannot afford to have insiders in the pocket of Wall Street writing the rules and making a rigged system worse.”
On October 22, 2016, Trump said, ““I've seen the system up-close-and-personal for many years. I've been a major part of it. I know how the game works in Washington and on Wall Street and I know how they've rigged the rules of the game against everyday Americans. The rules are rigged.”
Senator Baldwin highlighted legislation she introduced in 2015, the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act. Senator Baldwin’s reform would:
- Enhance the integrity of our financial regulatory system by slowing the revolving door between industry and government.
- Outlaw bonuses for government work by prohibiting government employees from accepting bonuses from their former private sector employers for entering government service.
- Expand cooling off periods and tighten lobbying rules.
- Reduce conflicts of interest by requiring senior financial service regulators to recuse themselves from any official actions that directly or substantially benefit the former employers or clients for whom they worked in the previous two years before joining federal service.
Senator Baldwin urged President-Elect Trump to adopt her reforms as he appoints staff for his Administration. “We have heard from too many Americans who feel that Washington’s economic and political system is broken and isn’t working for them. People are angry because they feel that too often our government institutions seem to work for big banks on Wall Street and not on behalf of working Americans who are struggling to get ahead. I have heard these voices and it is my hope that you have too,” Senator Baldwin wrote.
