Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said they are ridding themselves of campaign contributions related to Silicon Valley Bank after the financial institution collapsed.
Schumer has donated all SVB-related political contributions to charity, spokeswoman Allison Biasott told CNBC. Recipients include organizations based in Schumer’s home state, unnamed sources told the network.
(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 contributions allowed, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Becker and other SVB executives have been purged in the administration of the failed bank.
Becker also made campaign contributions to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has yet to address the issue.
Warner was one of 17 Senate Democrats who voted with Republicans to repeal the portion of the Dodd-Frank Act that strengthened bank regulation after 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.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has criticized Becker for pushing for regulatory ease.
“You lobbied for weaker regulations, got what you wanted, and used this opportunity to greedily and incompetently shirk your basic responsibilities to your clients and the public — facilitating an imminent economic disaster,” Warren wrote in a letter to the former CEO Tuesday. .
“There is much work to be done to understand the failure of SVB – and this effort must begin by understanding your role in the rollback of banking regulations that led to this failure,” added Warren.
Waters, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, told Politico on Tuesday that he will return the $2,500 in contributions he received from the bank’s PAC in 2020, when he chairs the panel.
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week after depositors rushed to withdraw their money. The US government guarantees all deposits over $250,000 that are not covered by FDIC protection.