Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said they’re ridding themselves of campaign contributions related to Silicon Valley Bank following the financial institution’s collapse.
Schumer has donated all SVB-related political contributions to charity, spokesperson Allison Biasott told CNBC. Recipients include organizations based in Schumer’s home state, an unnamed source told the network.
Advertisement
(BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company, banked with SVB.)
Schumer received $2,700 from the bank’s PAC in 2015, and $5,800 from CEO Greg Becker in June 2021, the maximum donation allowed, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Becker and other SVB executives have been purged in the government takeover of the failed bank.
Becker also made a campaign contribution to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has not addressed the matter.
Warner is one of 17 Senate Democrats who voted with Republicans to abolish parts of the Dodd-Frank Act that strengthened bank regulations following the 2008 financial crisis. The 2018 bill, signed into law by President Donald Trump, relaxed regulations on midsized banks like SVB and New York-based Signature Bank, which collapsed Sunday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has criticized Becker for pushing to ease the regulations.
“You lobbied for weaker rules, got what you wanted, and used this opportunity to greedily and incompetently abdicate your basic responsibilities to your clients and the public — facilitating a near-economic disaster,” Warren wrote in a letter to the ex-CEO Tuesday.
Advertisement
“There is much work to be done to understand the failure of SVB — and these efforts must start with understanding your role in the rollback of banking regulations that facilitated this failure,” Warren added.
Waters, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, told Politico on Tuesday that she will return the $2,500 contribution she got from the bank’s PAC in 2020, when she chaired that panel.
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week after depositors rushed to withdraw their money. The U.S. government guaranteed all deposits over $250,000 not covered by FDIC protection.
