Parties playing politics

Associated Pres

WASHINGTON

Republicans and Democrats are furiously casting each other as Wall Street’s handmaiden, playing to election-year anger surging on Main Street. But neither party has clean hands when it comes to the financial industry.

Both parties have accepted huge amounts of campaign cash from companies such as Goldman Sachs, the investment bank facing fraud charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Both parties welcomed big business’ chief executives to the White House when in power. Both share the blame for deregulating the industry in the 1990s and bailing out Wall Street when the financial sector was on the brink of collapse.

Not that either side will acknowledge it.

Instead, Republicans and Democrats are using President Barack Obama’s push for tighter controls on the industry to try to gain the political advantage with voters ahead of November’s congressional elections, when the balance of power in Washington is at stake.

With polls showing more voters favoring tighter controls on Wall Street than not, everyone wants to be seen as siding with the little guy.

The Center for Responsive Politics found that both sides raked in cash from the industry they’re vilifying.

In the current election cycle, the DNC collected $6.2 million from the financial services, real estate and insurance sectors and $3.7 million from other business interests. The RNC has raised $2.5 million from the industry and $2.7 million from other business interests.

Deregulation is faulted for the financial industry’s crisis — and both parties played a role.

The Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial from investment banking, but in 1999 most of its restrictions were repealed by a Republican Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton. In the fall of 2008, President George W. Bush and the Democratic Congress backed a massive bailout of the financial industry amid signs of impending economic collapse. Obama signed off on the second infusion of cash shortly after taking office.

Such coziness with Wall Street and politicians’ lack of candor about it are likely factors in low job-approval ratings for Congress and an overall cynicism about politics.