Wall Street Donated Heavily To Boehner As The GOP Blocked Funding For Dodd-Frank

House Republicans, including Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), were calling for repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law even before it had passed. Once they achieved a majority, House Republicans worked to undermine the law by cutting the budgets of financial market regulators and trying to slow down the implementation of several of the law’s provision.

And Wall Street evidently appreciates the effort, donating heavily to Boehner over the first half of this year. As Bloomberg News reported, “three of the five biggest sources of Boehner’s campaign cash this year are employees of three Wall Street investment houses, a shift from the 2010 election cycle when such contributors weren’t ranked among his top 10 donors”:

Employees at the New York hedge fund Paulson & Co. contributed $61,050 to Boehner’s campaign account, more than any other company. New York-based Moore Capital Management LLP employees gave $53,000, while those at Cantor Fitzgerald LP donated $45,000.

No one from any of those companies donated to Boehner for his 2010 re-election campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks political money. [...]

Boehner received most of the donations from Paulson & Co., Moore Capital and Cantor Fitzgerald in June, the same month the House voted along party lines to cut the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is writing most of the new derivatives rules, and the House Appropriations Committee voted to limit funding for the new consumer protection bureau.

As Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told ThinkProgress last week, the GOP’s refusal to fund the financial regulators implementing Dodd-Frank is impacting them “enormously.” “They can’t do the new duties. They can’t even carry out some of the old ones,” he said.

Wall Street has been spending almost as much to influence the implementation of Dodd-Frank as it spent trying to block the law. The Center for Public Integrity has found that “the Street and other financial institutions engaged about 3,000 lobbyists to fight Dodd-Frank – more than five lobbyists for every member of Congress – and have hired almost the same number to delay, weaken, or otherwise prevent its implementation.”

And part of Wall Street’s strategy seems to be keeping the speaker’s campaign coffers stuffed. Boehner’s office last week called Dodd-Frank one of the factors “holding back our economy.”