Sure, I think there's some value to Congress shining a light on Operation Chokepoint. Someone needs to. It's a shameless attempt by Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department to harass legal companies out of business by pressuring banks via the FDIC not to provide any financial services to them.
They're targeting easy targets like payday loan companies and, of course, gun manufacturers. And if you don't like those companies, you should (but maybe you don't) like living a country where businesses who follow the law can operate independent of politicians' extralegal harassment.
A selected group of House Republicans is now trying to put other federal agencies on the record with a vow that they are not part of this, via the
Daily Signal:
“In order to avoid the appearance that your agency is misusing government resources to pursue partisan ends, we request that you publicly disclaim your agency’s past, present and future involvement in Operation Choke Point or any similar operation,” wrote six Republicans in separate letters addressed to the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the National Credit Union Administration.
The reason for their demands, wrote Reps. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, Scott Garrett, R-N.J., Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., and Sean Duffy, R-Wis., is that Operation Choke Point “has caused small businesses, financial institutions and the American people to lose confidence in our nation’s banking regulators.”
The program has since been criticized for being used to target a number of legal, but politically unpopular industries like gun sellers, ammunition manufactures and payday lenders.
The Daily Signal has reported on a number of small business owners who believe their bank accounts and other financial services were shut down as a result of the Justice Department’s self-titled program.
Since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which examines and supervises more than 4,500 banks, came under fire for its alleged involvement in Operation Choke Point and was forced to change its regulatory policies, some Republicans believe that other Obama administration agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have stepped up their role in implementing Operation Choke Point.
This is useful as far as it goes, but you see the problem, right? These agencies publicy disavow any role in Operation Chokepoint. It's all on the record. Then when Obama wants them to participate in it, they do. OK, so? Who's going to do anything about it? Congress? How? Are they going to "cut off funding" for it? When did they ever vote to fund it in the first place? And if they try, Obama resists, we head for another shutdown showdown, the Republicans get scared that the media will blame them for it, and they back down.
And when they go public with accusations that other agencies got involved with this after vowing they wouldn't, the media yawns and covers for the White House as usual.
I'm not saying this couldn't get the public's attention, but congressional Republicans have to come up with a way to become the conduit of information directly to the public rather than trying to sell the story to the media and then getting frustrated and giving up when the media ignore the story or, worse, figure out a way to turn it against them. I think it can be done. The technology certainly exists for it. Getting anyone beyond conservative activists interested in it would be another matter, but if they would think outside their usual intellectual boundaries, I think they could come up with a way to do it.
As it stands, though, not enough people will care about these hearings to make the White House or any federal agency pay a price for their involvement in Operation Chokepoint. They should. But they don't.
