Friends of Rick Perry: Mr. and Mrs. Gramm 1/4

By Edward Goff (Page 2 of 5 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page. No comments

From 1967 to 1978, he taught economics at Texas A&M University, where Rick Perry was his "back of the class" student. Gramm found a kindred spirit in Perry and eventually made him his protege in the raw world of realpolitik. In Texas that world is all about who you know and how low you plan to go for them. In Perry's case, it was a bit lower than everybody else. Gramm would be instrumental in setting Perry up with the right contacts who would, later fund, Perry's campaign for Lieutenant Governor in 1998. Texas multi-millionaire James Leininger: Leininger contributed generously to that and to later Perry campaigns (We will throw a little more light on that man a bit later.)

In addition to teaching, Gramm founded the economic consulting firm Gramm & Associates (1971--1978) Ambitious Gramm had his eyes set on a much larger prize. In 1976, he challenged Texas Democratic Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen , in the party's senatorial primary and lost but ran successfully two years later as a Democrat for Representative from Texas's 6th congressional district .

Let's push fast forward here.

1981 - worked on Budget negotiations on a draft budget submitted by President Reagan.
1982 - was dismissed from the House Budget Committee for supporting Reagan's tax cuts.
January 5 1983 - Resigned from his seat
returned to the House of Representatives as a Republican.
1984 - was elected as a Republican to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate
1989- 2003 Gramm served on the Senate Budget Committee

Mind you, none of this time was wasted. Step by step, Gramm was making all the necessary contacts with corporations in the banking and financial sectors an contacts with the power players like Rove.

Between 1995 and 2000, Gramm was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs .The agency oversees matters related to: banks and banking, price controls, deposit insurance, export promotion and controls, federal monetary policy, financial aid to commerce and industry, issuance of redemption of notes, currency and coinage. As Time magazine puts it:

As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played the leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act.

And it was in this position that Gramm really came into his own.

image courtesy of Salon.com

Now that we know the steps Gramm took to get into the position, it's time for a word about Gramm's sense of ethics and moral judgement. Certainly Phil Gramm's history of questionable (putting it mildly) ethics runs back decades.

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