Category: Bergen County

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Wyckoff NJ, Former White House speechwriter  officially will seek to oust U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.) with an announcement Monday afternoon in Northvale. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is scheduled to be there as well.

The Wyckoff Democrat Gottheimer is a former speech writer for President Bill Clinton and worked in corporate strategy for Microsoft. He grew up in North Caldwell and has lived for the past four years in Wyckoff with his wife and two children.

“Scott Garrett isn’t pro-family,” Gottheimer said. “He’s not pro-business. He’s Dr. No. Dr. No to everything, and that hurts families here in New Jersey.”

So what is Josh Gottheimer for ? In one word BAILOUTS!

At a September possible Democratic candidate Gottheimer fundraiser that came less than a week after James Cicconi, the RINO Republican head of external affairs at AT&T Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Peter Scher hosted another one for the Democrat.Attendees included executives from Blackstone, Comcast, Verizon, McGraw Hill, U.S. Telecom Association, Tribune Media, United Health, Ogilvy & Mather, Raben Group and Akin Group. The invitation for the event had said it was “an excellent opportunity to oust one of the most conservative members of the House of Representatives.”

Bloomberg News, which was the first to report plans for the Cicconi fundraiser, said some business executives had already been growing tired of Garrett. They were apparently bothered by his vote against big spending former Speaker John Boehner,and were troubled that he has opposed the crony driven , taxpayer funded corporate welfare,  Export-Import Bank.

Garret also strongly opposes bailouts and in 2010 said , “The American people are tired of the safety net that has been provided to Wall Street. They want to put an end to the continued bailouts, and the bill currently under consideration in the Senate fails to accomplish this task. Wall Street is not afraid of this bill – as a matter of fact, Goldman Sachs, the same bank that has been charged by the SEC with fraud — and which also happens to have been President Obama’s single largest corporate donor in 2008 — has endorsed much of it. Goldman supports the bill because they know that it gives them and others an advantage in the marketplace by allowing their shareholders and creditors to be bailed out if they get into trouble because of the risks they take. …. We must end the era of bailouts and stop rewarding banks like Goldman Sachs with regulation that fails to protect American taxpayers.”

This stand against corporate bailouts and industry sponsored Dodd Frank has made Garrett unpopular in certian parts of the business community . In 2011 Garrett issued a strongly worded statement on Dodd Frank and the institutionalized “too big to fail policy”  , “In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, Democrats insisted that more regulation was the answer to our problems and that they had the right prescription to address the ailments of our financial system.  As it turns out, the 2,000 page bill they produced was not the right solution.  One year after it was signed into law, Dodd-Frank has done little to prevent another financial collapse, it has failed to streamline and simplify regulation, and it has actually codified ‘too big to fail’ and taxpayer bailouts into statute.  When the American people asked for limited government, less burdensome regulation, debt reduction and, most importantly, job creation, this was hardly the solution they had in mind.”