Sam Husseini: Your three biggest funders, according to Open Secrets — I don’t know if you want to dispute this [as he did the quote] — Travelers Company, J.P. Morgan and Blackstone group. Why shouldn’t regular people see things as you’re sort of doing the bidding of the big banks?
Richard Shelby: Well I haven’t done that. The people of Alabama know that I do their bidding and the American people know that I stand up for them. I don’t represent banks; I represent people. Some people represent banks but they’re hired to do this; I’m hired by the people of Alabama.
Husseini: This week saw a battle between the realtors and the banks — basically small businesses and the banks — and you decidedly came down on the side of the banks in terms of credit card and debit card fees.
Shelby: There’s a cost for any transaction for convenience and I believe we should not let the government set the price of anything in the marketplace — that’s what they would do. That should be set by private parties.
Husseini: During the financial meltdown, it was portrayed as an emergency: that we’ve got to bail Wall Street out or else it’s cataclysmic. And now, not just from you but from Obama saying fixing unemployment will take time, why is there urgency when it comes to ‘Oh my gosh the banks are in trouble,’ but not urgency when it comes to ‘Oh my god, middle America is in trouble.’
Shelby: Well if you go back to the history, you’ll recall that I was the one who opposed all the bank bailouts, all the car bailouts. The market should work. We should not throw taxpayers’ money at that. We should let the market create jobs, we should save people’s money, and that’s what I have always stood for.
[originally published on Washington Stakeout on June 13, 2011; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]