Steve Mnuchin Confirmed as Next Treasury Secretary

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After tonight’s narrow 53-47 Senate confirmation vote on Steve Mnuchin ’s nomination to become Treasury Secretary,Demand Progress released the following statement from its campaign director, Kurt Walters:

“As if Steve Mnuchin’s history of getting rich kicking ordinary Americans out of their homes wasn’t disqualifying enough, he spent the past few months pledging to eliminate rules on Wall Street banks, hiding his offshore assets from the public, and lying to the Senate.

“Senate Democrats should be applauded for delivering Mnuchin an unprecedented – and well-deserved – level of opposition.

“Republicans in the Senate cannot excuse putting a lying foreclosure profiteer at the head of our economy by pointing to party loyalty or a fear of Donald Trump. Nor can Senator Manchin credibly say his constituents are demanding a government more subservient to big banks. Senate Republicans will now own the unpopular pro-Wall Street, anti-middle class policies Mnuchin has said he will prioritize in Trump’s Treasury Department.

“President Trump has abandoned Candidate Trump’s promises to take on powerful Wall Street banks even faster than he filled his administration with Goldman Sachs bankers. Trump’s plummeting approval numbers suggest a full handover of power to wealthy elites isn’t what his voters bargained for. But with Steve Mnuchin’s record of profiting at the expense of ordinary Americans it’s what Senate Republicans have given them.”

Since Mnuchin’s late November nomination as Trump’s presumptive Treasury Secretary pick, Demand Progress and its Rootstrikers project have:

  • Organized more than 615,000 petition signatures against Steve Mnuchin’s nomination as Treasury Secretary and Trump’s entire “cabinet of hate and Wall Street greed.”

  • Organized their members and coalition partners to drive in more than 50,000 phone calls opposing Mnuchin’s Treasury nomination to Senate offices.
  • Partnered with Allied Progress Action and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to launch a 6-figure television ad targeting both Democratic and Republican senators in Nevada, Arizona, Iowa, Virginia, Delaware, Colorado, Missouri, Florida, and DC urging senators to reject Mnuchin’s Treasury nomination and featuring Lisa Fraser, a widow whose house was foreclosed on by Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin’s bank, OneWest.

Additional background onSteve Mnuchin

  • Mnuchin made a fortune off the foreclosure crisis. He ran a bank called a “foreclosure machine” for foreclosing on well over 36,000 homes — and later sold it for $3.4 billion.
  • Mnuchin would run the Treasury Department to benefit Wall Street. He’s promised to attack the Dodd-Frank reforms reining in abuse by big banks, calling it is his “number one priority on the regulatory side.”
  • Mnuchin’s bank foreclosed on families using techniques so aggressive a federal judge called them “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive.”
  • A leaked state attorney general’s office memo revealed evidence of “widespread misconduct” by Mnuchin’s bank, OneWest, and thousands of illegal actions like forging documents.
  • Steve Mnuchin is the ultimate Wall Street insider. He spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, peddling the types of risky derivatives that caused the financial crisis, and left with $46 million. His father was a Goldman banker, too.
  • Until December 2016, Mnuchin sat on the board of CIT Group, a bank that’s been designated “too big to fail” and lost $2.3 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars. He earned $4.5 million a year there.
  • Another Mnuchin company, Relativity Media is apparently undergoing federal investigation. Mnuchin resigned as Co-Chair of Relativity Media under shady circumstances – cashing out with $50 million just two months before Relativity declared bankruptcy.
  • Steve Mnuchin and his family pocketed $3.2 million from the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme and never returned a dime to victims of Madoff’s crimes.

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