The Hill reports that Waters had originally considered holding a press conference on Tuesday, then later cancelled — placing her in sharp contrast with Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y), who delivered a 37-minute floor speech about his own ethics investigation the day the House was back in session.

Waters did draw parallels between the two investigations on Tom Joyner’s radio show, however:

“The OCE [Office of Congressional Ethics] is poorly constructed,” Waters said. “You don’t know who is charging you with what or brought a claim against you or who brought the information to the OCE … of all the information claimed or accusations brought to them, they think that African-Americans are the only ones who they move further with investigation on.”

In truth, the OCE has recommended that a number of congressmen, both black and white, be further investigated, but the House Ethics Committee has chosen only to pursue those cases against Reps. Rangel and Waters. Waters’ attacks against the OCE reflected a general distaste that members of Congress share for the independent ethics body. In this case, however, it seems her indignation would be better directed against her peers on the ethics committee.

Nearly half of Americans say the Troubled Asset Relief Program — the bank bailout — passed under President Obama. A further 19 percent say they do not know whether Obama or his predecessor signed the bill. Of course, TARP passed through a Democratic Congress and President George W. Bush signed it into law.

According to the Ethics Committee, around September 7, 2008 — the date that the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — OneUnited CEO Kevin Cohee contacted Waters to ask for her help in setting up a meeting with officials at the Department of Treasury regarding the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That takeover resulted in total losses to all Fannie and Freddie stockholders, including OneUnited [a bank on whose board Waters' husband used to sit, and a bank he remained invested in].

[...]

Waters called the Treasury Department on September 8, 2008 and arranged the meeting with Treasury for the National Bankers Association, a trade organization for minority- and women-owned banks of which OneUnited was a member. Though the AU investigation and Ethics Committee disagree whether anyone but OneUnited officials were in attendance, a group representing NBA and including executives from OneUnited met with Treasury Department officials on September 9, 2008 to discuss the impact of the Fannie and Freddie takeover on minority-owned banks. She then directed her chief of staff, Mikael Moore, to follow up on the results of the meeting.

At the same time, the Ethics Committee says, Waters had her chief of staff — Moore, her grandson — email Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the head of the House Financial Services Committee, to say the bank was in trouble. Frank advised Waters and her office to stay out of it because of her conflicts of interest. But she allegedly continued to intervene on the bank’s behalf. The bank ultimately received $12 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The Ethics Committee argues Waters’ husband would have lost money were it not for that bailout.

The Ethics Committee charges that Waters violated three rules: dispensing a favor, not acting “in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House” and using her influence for personal benefit. Waters denies wrongdoing and has chosen to fight the charges.

The allegations have percolated for months. In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that Waters, against the advice of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the head of the House Financial Services Committee, had boosted the bank and called the Treasury Department on its behalf:

When Rep. Barney Frank was looking to aid a Boston-based lender last fall, the Massachusetts Democrat urged Maxine Waters, a colleague on the House Financial Services Committee, to “stay out of it,” he says. The reason: Ms. Waters, a longtime congresswoman from California, had close ties to the minority-owned institution, OneUnited Bank.

Ms. Waters and her husband have both held financial stakes in the bank. Until recently, her husband was a director. At the same time, Ms. Waters has publicly boosted OneUnited’s executives and criticized its government regulators during congressional hearings. Last fall, she helped secure the bank a meeting with Treasury officials.

When Waters called, her husband no longer sat on OneUnited’s board, but did hold its stock. Waters has vocally supported the minority-owned bank, which got into financial trouble due to its holding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock. It eventually received funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. OneUnited executives have given $12,500 to Waters’s election campaigns, the Wall Street Journal says.

Waters has reportedly elected to go through an ethics trial, like Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), rather than accepting the charges. The trial will take place around the time of the midterm elections.

Today Paul is honing in on some of those advertising dollars, but from an altogether different type of benefactor: Steve Forbes, along with E. O’Brien Murray, Mallory Factor and James Higgins of the Free Enterprise Fund, is hosting a gilded fundraiser for Paul in the Big Apple.

Although pensions are insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the payout for insured benefits hasn’t increased in years, so many retirees would see their benefits slashed.  Plus, the collapse of any multiemployer pension plan places an incredible strain on an agency already beleaguered by fiscal woes, and the failure of a large plan could cripple the agency.

Congress has already taken steps to provide targeted, short-term relief to ease them through these tough economic times, and funding relief will surely help some of these plans remain afloat.  But for a handful of multiemployer plans, short-term funding relief simply isn’t enough. Those are the plans we are focusing on today — the minority of plans that are truly in dire straits. They find themselves bearing costs dumped on them by defunct employers that failed to pay their fair share while, at the same time, watching their contribution base shrink as industries and demographics change over time. Those plans need long-term help and systemic reforms. The challenges faced by multiemployer plans are real, and we need to face them head-on because, quite frankly, they are simply too big to ignore.

Casey’s Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act targets hard-stricken multiemployer pension plans, which have suffered during the recession as individual firms paying into the plan have gone belly-up or have withdrawn, leaving the other firms to shoulder bigger burdens. Casey argues that the remaining payees into the fund should not have to cover the “orphan employees” of collapsed firms, and suggests moving them into a new Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. fund — where the pension liabilities would be backed by taxpayers. But the PBGC is already running deficits. And any new bailouts, even to good causes, will have serious trouble getting past Congress’ deficit hawks.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) spoke out in opposition to the plan yesterday. “Workers should not be burdened with wondering whether or not their pensions are secure,” he said. “We must come up with a plan to overhaul the multiemployer pension system. But we should not do it piecemeal with just a very small handful of companies. Otherwise, the system will end up a house of cards. Congress is an enabler to this situation because it would rather kick the can down the road than try to resolve the difficult problems today. Instead of providing false hope to a few retirees, we must address this issue with the seriousness it deserves and overhaul the system.”

Multiemployer pension plans cover around a quarter of workers with a pension. Deficit hawks worry that bailing out some pensions would lead to a broader and much more expensive reform, adding tens of billions to the national debt. Casey estimates his plan would cost $8 billion over 10 years.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote the Audit the Fed amendment that was passed by the Senate on Tuesday. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

On Tuesday, the Senate voted in a landslide to approve the Audit the Fed amendment to Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform proposal. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the author of the amendment, has directed the Government Accountability Office to publish a report on the Fed’s books by Dec. 1, 2010, reviewing in a way that “does not interfere with monetary policy” but does “let the American people know the names of the recipients of over $2,000,000,000,000 in taxpayer assistance.”

[Economy1] But what will the Fed audit be looking for? What might it find? The shortest answer is that the audit will review and post online thus far unpublished details about the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs — the alphabet soup of initiatives the Fed created in haste to provide liquidity to and restore confidence in the banking sector during the financial crisis. The programs have garnered criticism as the Fed created them unilaterally, without the input of the Hill, due to the “unusual and exigent circumstance” of the crisis.

Fed audit proponents say some of those programs — most notably, the Fed’s Maiden Lane portfolio of assets bought from Bear Sterns and AIG — might seem questionable or even prove embarrassing under public scrutiny. “The transparency is nonexistent, and the possible taxpayer losses are huge. The Fed should not be in the business of managing these assets. And we’ll finally get to see what they are,” said one Democratic Hill staffer without permission to speak on the record.

The audit is roughly limited to the period of the recession, from Dec. 1, 2007 until the date that the Senate approves the final regulatory reform bill. Most of the Fed audit will be noncontroversial, even if it does make public new details about the Fed’s books. It will include a careful review of the Fed’s straightforward lending programs, each designed to pump liquidity into the market for a different kind of asset. The names are boggling: the asset-backed commercial paper money market mutual fund liquidity facility, the primary dealer credit facility, the commercial paper funding facility, the term securities lending facility. But the idea behind each is simple. Give a low-cost loan for a fixed period of time to a financial firm impacted by the seizing of credit markets. Make sure you require usable collateral for the loan. And therefore help the market while ensuring taxpayers are not on the hook. The majority of these programs sunsetted on Feb. 1, 2010, leaving the Fed’s books with few taxpayer dollars required.

So what will the audit reveal about these programs? Details. Thus far, the Fed has provided only aggregate data about its lending programs. The audit will reveal what banks received what loans, at what interest rate, in return for what collateral as well as when the Fed was paid back. The data for most programs is not expected to prove controversial. But if the Fed continually allowed one bank to post dodgy collateral, or offered beneficial interest rates to big banks but not smaller ones — that could prove questionable and could earn the Fed additional scrutiny as well as criticism.

A few emergency lending programs remain, and those will receive a thorough audit as well. Among them are the term auction facility, which auctions collateralized loans to banks (that is, lends banks cash if they put up bonds, stocks or some other asset in case they cannot pay back the New York Fed) and continues to help ease short-term lending. Its most recent auction, in March, pumped $25 billion into the market.

Another — and a program Fed audit boosters want analyzed closely — is the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF. The program supports the market for financial products backed with streams of income from consumer loans, like student loans, car payments, credit cards and Small Business Administration loans, later expanded to include commercial mortgage-backed securities. When the credit markets seized up during the financial crisis, the market for those asset-backed securities froze as well. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York created the program to lend up to $1 trillion to people looking to buy AAA-rated asset-backed securities, and the largest part of the program closed in March. The facility only ended up issuing around $100 billion in securities and was hailed as a success.

The controversy over TALF stems from a quirk of the program’s design. When the Fed lent money to companies looking to purchase asset-backed securities, it made them put up stocks, bonds or other financial instruments as collateral. The Treasury pledged funds to buy that collateral from the Fed in case the debtors could not repay their loans. But a Government Accountability Office criticized how the Fed and Treasury vetted that collateral and slammed the program as opaque. The report said: “[Treasury] has not developed measures to analyze and publicly report on the potential purchase, management, and sale of such assets. Without such a plan, Treasury cannot measure TALF’s success in meeting its goals.”

Neil Barofsky, the government watchdog for the Treasury’s emergency programs, also criticized TALF for relying on credit ratings agencies to determine which asset-backed securities were AAA. The ratings agencies wildly misrepresented the risk of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis, Barofsky noted. And the government was trusting them without performing its own due diligence. “Treasury and [Fed] should examine Moody’s assertions and develop mechanisms to ensure that acceptance of collateral in [TALF] is not unduly influenced by the improper incentives to overrate that exist among the rating agencies,” his report argued.

The most controversial part of the audit — indeed, one of the most controversial of the Fed’s programs, full stop — will be the Maiden Lane funds. (Maiden Lane is the street behind the Fed building in New York City.) The Fed created the funds to support the purchase of Bear Sterns by Wall Street giant J.P. Morgan Chase and the winding down of AIG. Maiden Lane I includes assets from Bear Sterns; Maiden Lane II includes AIG’s securities business; and Maiden Lane III includes AIG’s credit default swaps.

Maiden Lane I is the most controversial. The New York Federal Reserve Bank created the fund specifically to back the worst of Bear Sterns’ assets — the ones nobody wanted when the firm was cratering. Many on Wall Street and the Hill contend that the government overpaid for the assets to convince J.P. Morgan to buy up the rest of Bear Sterns, essentially transferring free money to the Wall Street bank. Furthermore, J.P. Morgan’s chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, was on the board of the New York Fed at the time of the deal.

The uncertainty over the value of the fund — initially and currently — also has garnered Congressional heat. The Fed had promised that it does not expect “any net loss to the Federal Reserve or taxpayers” from Maiden Lane. But Maiden Lane I has declined in value at least 10 percent — and many on the Hill and on Wall Street do not trust the valuation of the assets, which until now have not received Congressional scrutiny. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), for instance, has slammed the Fed over Maiden Lane. After it announced losses, he said, “the American people have a right to know what the true value of the assets they now own are and if the people controlling those assets project any further losses that may result from the Federal Reserve’s actions in bailing out Bear Stearns.”

Then, there are Maiden Lane II and III, which purchased around $50 billion of toxic assets from AIG. Most believe that the government overpaid for those assets as well — and the Hill wants more insight into how they are managed. “If the audit only looked at Maiden Lane, it would almost be worth it,” the Hill staffer said.

Check out the video after the jump:

At Saturday’s Utah GOP convention, Bennett finished third in a second-round vote on potential Senate nominees. The 3,500 voting delegates instead supported businessman Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee as the top two finishers. Bennett critics, including the Club for Growth, had derided the senator’s vote for the bailout, as well as a bipartisan health care proposal which the Club argued “rivals ObamaCare.”

Bennett told The Associated Press after the first round of voting on Saturday that he would not rule out a write-in candidacy if he were to lose — which he did in the next round.

As of Monday morning, Bennett had yet to confirm whether he will launch a write-in candidacy, but if he does decide to make another go of it, he won’t have the support of the national party. “I want to be clear that the NRSC will wholeheartedly support the Republican candidate that primary voters in Utah ultimately choose as their nominee,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn said Saturday in what was effectively a farewell letter to Bennett.

Though Saturday’s 3,500 delegates ousted the senator, Bennett may fare better among the voting public. A write-in candidacy would ostensibly threaten the GOP nominee’s chances of winning in November by splitting the conservative vote. John McCain carried the state of Utah in 2008 with 63 percent of the vote.

According to the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s website, Bennett simply needs to file a Declaration of Write-In Candidacy at least 30 days prior to the general election in order to appear as a write-in candidate on the November ballot.

Participants at the meeting were impressed by Obama’s strong command of the issues at hand and appalled by McCain’s acknowledgment that he had not even read Paulson’s three-page bailout plan.

A Republican sitting some distance down the long table whispered to a pair of Democratic senators, “Everyone here is ready to vote for Obama, including the Republicans.” [Democratic House Financial Services Committee Chairman] Barney Frank was even more disgusted than usual. “This was about as unpresidential as it gets,” he said later.

Bush’s expressive face said it all. When Obama spoke, he paid careful attention, as if he knew that here was his successor. When McCain spoke, Bush’s face was quizzical and unconvinced, as if he’d eaten something sour.

But that was the civilized portion of the meeting. Shortly thereafter, Paulson begged Democrats not to attack the bailout plan. But it was the Republicans who had withdrawn their support, and Frank was incensed at Paulson’s suggestion that Democrats were somehow to blame.

Barney Frank muscled his way past Harry Reid and started yelling. “F— you, Hank! F— you! Blow up this deal? We didn’t blow up this deal! Your guys blew up the deal! You better tell [GOP Rep. Spencer] Bacchus and the rest of them to get their s— together!” When Paulson tried to equivocate, Frank threw in another “F— you, Hank!” — his third of the day.

For all the bedlam at the meeting, Obama and his team emerged confident that the election was theirs to win — and that the country needed them to win.

“That was surreal,” Obama said on the speakerphone from the car on the short ride back to the hotel, with several campaign aides on the call. “Guys, what I just saw in there made me realize, we have got to win. It was crazy in there.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be president,” he said in his familiar wry tone, only with more amazement than usual. “But he definitely shouldn’t be.”