Himes announces Chief of Staff

by: mattw

Tue Dec 30, 2008 at 13:34:54 PM EST

Himes, who beat Republican Rep. Chris Shays in last month's election, will bring on Hill veteran Jason Cole as his chief of staff, according to Don Carlson, chief of staff for the transition. Cole, former legislative director for Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., is already preparing for the job, although the hire isn't official until Jan. 3, according to congressional rules.

Carlson said Cole, whose former boss in Congress is a fiscal conservative - a Blue Dog Democrat - who often advocated for benefits for military members and their families, brings "the legislative depth that we need in our staff on the Hill."

Looking around, Cole's recent work also includes at least a few years as Federal Affairs Manager and director of UBS' U.S. Office of Public Policy, where he worked as a lobbyist along with Phil Gramm.

His policy interests seem to have been mainly in bankruptcy law, where he has been in the news opposing "cramdown" provisions (meaning allowing bankruptcy courts to revalue debt, especially for homeowners):

Jason Cole, executive director of federal affairs of UBS Americas Inc., New York, said restructuring is inevitable, along with a new wave of regulation. He and Hill said bankruptcy provisions-measures strongly and successfully opposed thus far by MBA-appear "inevitable," and that they could be included in a future economic stimulus bill in planning stages. [...]

Cole commended partnerships among associations for advocacy, especially on the bankruptcy issue. "The joint trade association effort with MBA and others has been successful on the issue of bankruptcy," he said. "All of them worked together and no one has tripped over themselves. There was good information sharing. If not, we would have been crammed down nine months ago."

Cole said he hopes that Congress "runs out the clock" for the remainder of the year on bankruptcy. "If we can have demonstrable evidence of foreclosures going down, rate of work outs go up, we can convince them [policymakers] otherwise," he said. (link)

This quote from just before the election in 2006 was also interesting to me:

In a recent report, UBS said Democrats would likely exert pressure on Republicans by holding high-profile hearings on controversial topics, such as "global warming, Halliburton's activities in Iraq, Wal-Mart's employment practices and allegedly excessive pharmaceutical prices."

If "government by subpoena" occurs, it would create "headline risk" for a number of key industries and companies, says Jason Cole, federal affairs manager at UBS.

That said, Himes has gone on the record [MP3 link] insisting that banks must accept revaluation of mortgages, opposing Gramm-Leach-Bliley, criticizing the weakness of regulation (especially of the credit default swap market), and advocating for homeowners facing foreclosure.

So, while my first reaction to the news was surprise that anyone would hire the director of an investment bank's federal lobbying shop to run a Congressional office in 2008, if Himes intends to make the banking and mortgage industries drink the bitter medicine that they must to make our economy healthy again, Cole might be a good choice to administer the cure.