Ryan Raises Debt: Picture of the Day 2012 10 06

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You may be surprised to learn that the Ryan Budget, passed 4/15/2011, does not end deficits or reduce debt in the next 10 years.   That's not according to me reporting on a study I read about on Michael Moore's blog.   The projections about what the Ryan Budget does to the debt apparently have to, by law, be included as part of the Ryan Budget bill itself.   Here I cut the bill up and paste it onto a lightened picture of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.   The source of the debt figures is the bill itself, which makes them tough to challenge.

Our own Frank Guinta played a special role in the birth of the Ryan budget.   He provided the crucial swing vote making it 19-18 to get the bill out of committee.

The Ryan budget will (if enacted) kill 4 million jobs in the next two years, according to Fox News.  Thanks, Frank!  Forbes reports the Ryan budget wont be in balance until after 2040.    

It's never been about reducing debt with Republicans.   It's about giving tax breaks to rich folks.

Guinta job fairs are just glorified photo ops

Breaking News 11/3/2012:   The Associated Press reports there's no evidence that anyone got a job at a Guinta job fair.   NotIntaGuinta.org readers knew this a month ago because they read the following post.     Be sure to notice the lame dodge from Guinta - he won't tell us names because he's respecting the privacy of the newly hired.   Maybe we need a school to make congressmen better liars. 

Please check out the related post Frank Guinta's Plan For America, which takes his job fair idea into other areas. 

I have three problems with the job fairs Rep. Guinta endlessly touts:

• Mr. Guinta's fairs are sham events that focus on generating campaign photos rather than finding constituents jobs.

• Mr. Guinta then mails us all photos of the fairs at taxpayer expense.

• The fairs provide cover that allows Mr. Guinta to claim he's doing something about jobs, when in fact he is not doing the hard work of creating bipartisan legislation that will help create jobs.

Representative Guinta exploits veterans with his phony job fairs

The rate of unemployment among vets is several points higher than the rate for the country as a whole.   It's a national disgrace.  But there's terrible gridlock in congress.   Nothing can get done.

Frank Guinta is on the case.  He's going to get those vets jobs if he has to find each one a job himself.  So he hosts job fair for vets.  

It's a good story.   NPR reported it.  Let's see how it went.

 There was this letter in the Concord Monitor on November 13, 2011 from a man who attended Rep. Guinta's event.  It's entitled "Useless job fair from Guinta."

I had the displeasure recently of attending U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta's job fair at the New Hampshire Community College in Manchester. My son, who is a U.S. Marine, and I traveled from the Monadnock Region to attend this job fair. We arrived just before 10 a.m. 

Companies with applications were nowhere to be found, not a good thing for veteran job-seekers. They had a table with some snacks on it. There was a table set up for recruiting, a table set up for homeless veterans, a table with a Walmart representative who said Walmart would be sending holiday packages for the troops. A nice gesture in my opinion, but there weren't any job applications at this table. Another table was set up representing the American Legion and maybe one or two more tables geared toward military benefits. 

It was a sorry excuse for wasting my gas money. I didn't see one representative from a company that had job applications. I suppose if you wanted to enlist or reenlist, then Guinta wouldn't have to worry so much about the state of the economy. My advice: Don't waste your gas.

Lee Richardson, Bradford

Then there's this video on YouTube.    The description states:

Jack Cochrane did everything he could to get a job, before finally pleading to his Congressman for help. Frank Guinta promised 4 times to "personally help" Cochrane, then blew him off while Cochrane lost his home and his daughter.

I've been looking for a report that someone actually got a job at one of these fairs.   I couldn't find one.   No letter to the editor, no comment on a blog thanking Mr. Guinta for getting him a job.    If you find one, please leave a comment and I'll update this paragraph.

Well, you'd never know the Guinta job fairs were shams from the picture of the event:

He got some log rolling the other day when veterans defending his record said: 

He especially impressed us when he hosted a job fair specifically for military veterans to help put those who served back to work — something former Congresswoman Shea-Porter never did.

Of course, Carol Shea-Porter spent her time in her office passing actual laws to get veterans jobs and health care.

Rep. Guinta responds to accusations that his job fairs don't actually get people jobs here in the new (11/3/2012) Associated Press piece:

Guinta said the feedback he’s received from businesses has been largely positive, but ‘‘there are rules in terms of what I'm allowed to publicize once these people get a job,’’ he said. ‘‘There are privacy issues there.’’

In other words, Rep. Guinta failed to name a single person who got a job at one of his fairs.   You'd think at least one person would be grateful enough to give the congressman permission to use his name.

 Mr. Guinta abuses taxpayer-funded mailing privileges

What did Mr. Guinta do with the pictures from this and similar events?   Here's a clue from the Concord Monitor story from 4/29/2012 entitled "Guinta spent most on mailings."    "Franking" is the word used to refer to taxpayer-funded mass mailings from congressman.   

Guinta, who in 2010 criticized his Democratic opponent, then-Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, for her use of franked mailings, spent $164,649 on franked mail last year. 

A 5/15/2012 USA Today story "House freshmen spent millions of tax dollars on mailings" had a higher estimate for the price tag.

When he ran for Congress two years ago, New Hampshire Republican Frank Guinta blasted Democratic incumbent Carol Shea-Porter's frankings as "propaganda," and described them as "campaigning with our tax dollars."

As a freshman, Guinta sent 469,013 mass mailings last year at a cost to taxpayers of $206,276, ranking him 21st among House members for money spent on franked mail. In one piece distributed in October, he told constituents that he "is working to improve the economy for your family."

469,013 mass mailings!   Impressive.    Note that Mr. Guinta is now attacking Shea-Porter for a typical $30,000 salary expense, which is dwarfed by his use of $200,000 in taxpayer funds to send what were essentially campaign materials.    By the way, Mr. Guinta attacked Shea-Porter for abusing her franking privilege for spending that turns out to be less that half of Mr. Guinta's total.

Mr. Guinta isn't doing the job the taxpayers hired him for

What bothers me the most is that we are paying Mr. Guinta to be our representative in the US congress.   He's supposed to be a legislator - a lawmaker.    But the supposed "jobs" bills that Mr. Guinta votes for seldom become laws.  

Mr. Guinta provides us a list of his supposed jobs bills.    They're supposedly bipartisan as well.    Of the twenty eight bills he lists (oddly his literature says there are 30 or 40) four have been signed into law by the president:

Small Business Paperwork Mandate Elimination Act

H.R. 4 - Signed into law by the President on April 14, 2011 

Summary from Thomas:

Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayments Act of 2011 - Amends the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) repeal requirements for the reporting to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of payments of $600 or more to corporations that are not tax-exempt and of gross proceeds paid in consideration for any type of property; (2) repeal requirements for reporting payments made with respect to rental property which is not part of a trade or business; and (3) increase the limitation on recapture of excess advance payments of the tax credit for health insurance premiums.

3% Withholding Rule Repeal

H.R. 674 - Signed into law by the President on November 21, 2011

This is actually a job-creation bill that should get some veterans back to work (summary).   It offers employers up to $5,600  to use as 40% of a newly hired vet's wages.   The amount goes up to $9,600 to vets with service-related disabilities.

Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012

H.R. 3630 - Signed into law by the President on February 22, 2012

summary  Extends unemployment benefits, payroll tax cut, food stamps.   Seems a little light on direct job creation.

US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act

H.R. 3078 - Signed by the President on October 21, 2011

summary

So, of the 28 bills Mr. Guinta calls "jobs bills" that Mr. Guinta lists, only four passed, and only one of these is a bona-fide attempt to create jobs.   H.R. 647 looks like a nice bipartisan compromise: use federal dollars to boost private sector hiring of vets.

Frank, why aren't you working on more things like this?   It's truly bipartisan -- it passed a GOP dominated house and a Democratic senate and was signed by a Democratic president.    Don't you see how it's different than what you call "bipartisan" ?  You get one or two Democratic votes on a largely party line house bill, and call that bipartisan.   Of course the senate is not going to vote on any of your "bipartisan" bills.   You make no effort to work with the senate on a bill that could be passed in both chambers and signed by the president.

Politifact calls Frank Guinta's claim that the jobs bills he's passed are bipartisan "mostly false."

Frank, you're a legislator.   You're not job fair planner-in-chief.   Your job is to make laws.   To implement policy to solve our nation's problems.   If there's some shortage of job fairs that's keeping our people from working, your job is to pass laws to fix this.   Staging a few job fairs instead of passing laws is an abdication of your responsibility to your constituents.   

Voting for "Disapproval of FCC's Net Neutrality Regulations" is not helping anyone get a job.  Even if it did get through congress, which it has no chance of.   Yet it's on your list of jobs bills.

Passing bills that will never be adopted by the senate is not making laws.   It's not really doing anything.

Frank, I saw somewhere in your literature that you were doing something about healthcare for veterans.   Promise me you haven't donned a stethoscope and started making house calls.

Misleading Anti Shea-Porter Mailer

I got this mailer in the mail a couple of days ago.   Here's the meat:

It's not directly from Rep. Guinta.  It's from his pals at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee.   Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that unlike with Super PACs or other outside organizations, there's no rule preventing Congressman Guinta from working with the Republican state committee on the content of their ads.   I think it's likely he approved this ad.

Actually, I just noticed the same attack on Rep. Guinta's website.

The mailer mentions 42 months of unemployment over 8%.   Of course it doesn't mention that the unemployment was caused during George Bush's term by the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.    And somehow it neglects to mention that Frank Guinta has been our representative for over half of those 42 months.    Actually, it doesn't mention Frank Guinta at all.   In fact it goes through some contortions to avoid mentioning Rep. Guinta, oddly asking people to "vote no on Carol Shea-Porter."

The mailer claims Carol Shea-Porter sent her staff home with "massive bonuses" at taxpayer expense.   It references Legistorm.  I thought I'd verify the claim.

The concern seems to be the period from 1/1/2011 to 3/31/2011, the first quarter of 2011, 1Q11.    Outgoing representatives and their staff only work a few days in that period, as the new congress starts in early January.

Here's the data from Legistorm.   I compared Carol Shea-Porter to Paul Hodes, the district 2 NH rep who also lost in 2010.   Then I looked a list of all the house reps who lost in 2010, and looked up the first few (sorted by state) in Legistorm.   Here's the result.

1Q11 staff salaries of defeated house members from the 111th Congress.

Dist Representative      Staff Salary, 1Q11

NH1  Shea-Porter          $29,876
NH2  Hodes                  $42,027
AL2  Bright                     $6,634
AZ1  Kirkpatrick          $178,428
AZ5  Mitchell               $120,791
CO3  Salazar                   $9,487
CO4  Markey              $148,559
FL2  Boyd                    $25,554
FL8  Grayson               $59,164


I got "You have reached the limit of your free access allowed in a one-month period" from Legistorm.  I'm not going to pay $30 to add more lines to this table, so let's stop here.  

It's very clear that Shea-Porter did not do anything unusual or outrageous with her staff pay after she was voted out of office.   She looks positively thrifty compared to some of these outgoing representatives.   Three of the eight others on this list spent more than four times as much on outgoing staff.   The mailer is misleadingly trying to make an issue of what appears to be perfectly reasonable behavior by outgoing Representative Shea-Porter.

Is this the really the best you can do, Frank?

I'll bet that Frank Guinta's final staff salary tab in 1Q13 exceeds Carol Shea-Porter's final tab.   But I'm not going to complain about it.  It will be worth the money to get Rep. Guinta out of that seat and Rep. Shea-Porter back in.

Back of the Envelope Debate Math

I'm going to focus on the presidential race in this post.   Back to NH District 1 soon.

Mitt Romney's tax plan is going to be a big subject in the presidential debate coming tomorrow night.   What deductions will he have to cut if he cuts rates by 20% ?    Here's my back of the envelope debate math.  

I'll try to keep it simple. I'm going to express everything in fraction of GDP because it's easier to get your head around that than trillions of dollars.

Mitt Romney's plan is a 20% across the board cut in tax rates. Mitt says it will be revenue neutral. This means tax deductions must be reduced if total tax revenue is to stay the same under the lower rates. If you raise taxable income by reducing deductions you can collect the same total amount of tax with lower rates. That's the plan. With me so far?


Up to here, I don't think Mitt would disagree with how I've described his plan.   Why it's supposed to work I'm less sure.  Somehow the magic of lower rates is supposed to create jobs even though the total tax burden is the same. It's just paid by different people. For now, let's skip the question as to whether that would actually create jobs and focus on how to make the numbers add up.


Federal income tax is about 9% of GDP (this excludes payroll taxes, and includes 7.5% personal income tax and 1.5% corporate income tax).  20% of that is 1.8% of GDP. So if Mitt's plan is going to be revenue neutral, it needs to reduce deductions by 1.8% of GDP.

Actually, Mitt's plan also eliminates the estate tax and the AMT and lowers corporate tax.    The number being tossed around is $5T over 10 years, about 3% of GDP.   Let's go with 2.5% on the back of the envelope.

Here's how much each deduction costs the treasury, biggest on down, as a percentage of GDP.  I'm using the word deduction loosely here to refer to all tax expenditures.

Cost(%GDP) Deduction

1.8% Employer Healthcare Deduction
1.1% Retirement contributions not taxable
0.8% Mortgage Interest
0.5% Reduced rate on dividends & capital gains
0.3% Capital Gain Exclusion at Death
0.3% State and Local Tax
0.3% Charity
0.3% Earned Income Tax Credit
0.2% Untaxed Retirement Benefits (incl Social Security)

0.1% Child Tax Credit

1.0% Other

That's about it for the substantial ones. The plan requires you cut 2.5 points out of the these deductions listed.  They add up to about 6.7  points, 6.7% of GDP. So Mitt's plan is to cut about one third of deductions, each of which some people have grown pretty attached to. There's no other way. Mr. Romney wants all the votes he can get, so he does not want to piss off any of those people. That's why he can't possibly give details of his plan in the debate. If he does start to list things he wont touch ("the mortgage deduction is sacred", say) you can use this handy table to figure out what's left -- that's what he actually plans to cut.

The rest of this was written in the middle of the night and may ramble.   Feel free to stop here.

[Sanity check.   GDP is around $15.5 trillion.   15.5*.09 = $1.4T income tax.  20% is $0.3T, the revenue lost from reducing rates.   Over 10 years that's $3T.   The number you hear for the amount of deductions to be cut to make Romney's plan revenue neutral is $5T.   I think there's more in Mitt's plan than the 20% rate cut that goes into that number.  Maybe the AMT, Estate Tax and corporate tax cuts.    The real amount may be higher, up to 3.0% of GDP]

Actually, I've heard it proposed that Mitt would eliminate all dividend & capital gains taxes.  This doesn't seem to be part of his current proposal, but let's see what that would do to the other deductions.  Those taxes collect around 2% of GDP. So we could cross the cap gain stuff off my list, leaving 6% of GDP available to cut. We'd then have to cut 4.5% of GDP (2.5+2) to stay revenue neutral. In other words, a 20% across the board income tax rate cut coupled with eliminated tax of dividends and capital gains would require 75% of every other tax deduction to be cut in order to be revenue neutral.

Here's news that Mitt is proposing reducing the mortgage deduction.

News just out that Mitt has floated capping total itemized deductions at $17,000.   That seems a pretty progressive proposal for a guy like Mitt.  It's definitely the higher incomes that have deductions greater than $17,000.  

I understand that Mitt current plan does not touch the rate on investment income beyond repealing Obamacare.   His taxes, and all those that make money from dividends and capital gains, will remain largely unchanged.

But it's different if you make a wage.  Your rate goes down by 20% but you lose deductions.  In New York City I think you pay around 12% state and city income tax.   So just the state and city tax on $140,000 would eat up your entire deduction.   That's not really that high an income for a New York couple.   You save .20*$27K= $5,400 from the rate cut.   That's about what your mortgage deduction was probably worth.  You don't get to deduct any additional state and city tax. No charitable deductions.

So, Mitt's plan a hurts the people in the high tax places more.   This is a good choice for Mitt -- he's probably not going to win in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts or Maryland anyway.

For very high wages with state tax.  If your wage is w, your state tax rate s and the top marginal federal bracket is f, your state tax deduction is worth d=s*w*f.   Under the Romney plan, you save t=.20*f*w.   The benefit to the taxpayer of Mitt's plan = t-s = (.2-s)*f*w.   f*w is the (approximate) tax you owe.  (.2-s)*f*w is the amount you save under Mitt's plan.  Since all state taxes are less than 20%, .2-s will be positive, and the high wage earner saves money under Mitt's plan  (not counting other deductions they'd lose).   The less state tax you paid before, the more you save.

OK, I've really gone off the deep end here.  See you after the debate.


Thursday, October 4.   Debate Postscript.

I'll admit I'm a bit depressed after the debate. Democrats are just going to have to buck up, get tough and work harder now. Rather than wallowing I thought I'd come up with what I would have said to Mitt about his tax plan. Maybe that is wallowing. But it's constructive too because there's still time to say it.

It was a very wonky debate, so here's my rather wonky take on what I think the president should have said about Mitt's plan. 

Let's focus on the top 5% of personal federal income tax returns. That's about 6 million families with the highest income. For over a decade, they've all always earned above 250,000 a year every year. Sometimes much more. Their average income is over half a million dollars a year. They pay about 16% in personal income tax. This works out to about 500 billion dollars a year in personal income taxes from these folks. On behalf of the United States of America, I want to thank them for that. That is a real contribution to building our country.

Mitt, your 20% rate cut by itself reduces their tax bill by 100 billion dollars a year. Currently these folks use tax expenditures, meaning they take deductions and exemptions, that in total reduce their taxable income by 17%. So you're going to have to eliminate all their deductions. You have to take away their home mortgage deductions, take away their state and local tax exemptions, take away their charitable contribution deductions, and all the rest. And you'll still collect 3% less of their income, about 15 billion dollars less. And when you back out expenditures for investment income and gains, which you've said you wouldn't touch, it's more like 30 billion dollars a year less your plan collects from these folks. You're going to have to get that 30 billion from lower income folks if you want to make your plan revenue neutral. It's just math.

References

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43373
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412495-Distribution-of-Tax-Expenditures.pdf
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/1001234_tax_expenditures.pdf

Frank Guinta's Lying Robocalls

Imagine you're the challenger trying to get elected to the US house in 2010.   You might spend some of your campaign dollars to rent a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded telephone message to the voters - a robocall.   Here's your message:

“Hi. This is Frank Guinta, candidate for Congress, running against Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter.  I’m running to end the broken culture of Washington.”

Simple.   Effective.   Everybody hates Washington.   Congratulations Frank, you're elected.

The problem is, this is not a transcript of a robocall that Mayor Guinta ran in 2010.  It is a robocall that Representative Guinta ran in the summer of 2012.   That's right.  These are his re-election calls.  Frank Guinta is pretending to be the challenger.  It's shameless.

Rep. Guinta must be thinking that it worked so well being the challenger the first time, why not do it again?   Everybody hates congress, especially this congress.  That he's not actually the challenger this time -- that's just one of those pesky facts that can be glossed over.   Like Mitt, apparently Frank isn't going to let his campaign be dictated by fact checkers.   He obviously thinks his constituents are idiots.   At least the ones that he assumes will be fooled by this call into voting for him.

I suppose the irony is that an incumbent pretending to be the challenger "running to end to broken culture of Washington" is a prime example of the broken culture of Washington.  

I've looked at a fair number of articles about this.  The only defense from the Guinta campaign is that they were "showing respect" for Carol Shea-Porter by using her old title.  Well, you have to admire the audacity of his campaign for calling their deceitful tactic "showing respect."  Where I come from that's called chutzpah.  Apparently they do not feel the need to apply the same standard of respect to their own candidate, Congressman Guinta, whose title is never mentioned in the call.   

At least the Guinta campaign admits they made the calls.  I've read through the comments in the articles, and not even Frank Guinta's supporters have gone with "showing respect."  The most they can muster is to call Carol Shea-Porter names. 

The Concord Monitor notes a similar tactic used by the National Republican Congressional Committee this cycle.   The Committee said it's time to "replace" Shea-Porter and other Democrats who supported President Obama's health care law.   Some of the articles cited below talk about how our Mr. Guinta is not the only Republican congressman to run for reelection by pretending he's not a congressman.

I would simply love to get a recording of this call.  Somebody still has this message on their answering machine or in their voice mail.   I never delete -- I may still have it.   But I probably wasn't on the list of numbers to be called.   If anyone can point me at a recording of this call, they'll get a special place of honor at NotIntaGuinta.org.

Let's give Frank the benefit of the doubt.   Maybe he's just forgotten that he won in 2010.    After all, he forget about his $355,000 bank account.   He should get his memory checked while he still has his congressional health care.

- Dean

Here are some references:

August 3, 2012  Concord Monitor  Guinta camp: Shea-Porter is incumbent.  Campaign calls frame rep as the challenger

August 13, 2012  Union Leader editorial.  Good grief: Guinta disowns Congress

July 19, 2012  Miscellany: Blue.  Incumbent Frank Guinta catches anti-incumbent fever

August 7, 2012   The Wire   Frank Guinta’s breathtaking hypocrisy

August 5, 2012  Politico  GOP freshmen run away from incumbency

August 6, 2012  Green Mountain Daily   Republican Mendacity, special cross-border edition
August 6, 2012   Real Clear Politics   Incumbents Deceive Voters About Their Jobs

August 6, 2012  maddowblog   The challenges of incumbency

August 27, 2012   seacoastonline opinion.  The two faces of Rep. Frank Guinta

I Loathe 47%: Picture of the Day 2012 10 01

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Photoshopped Picture of the Day - October 1, 2012

I've recently tried my hand at producing graphics relevant to the 2012 campaign.   Generally I start with a photograph I find on the net, use Photoshop to manipulate the picture somewhat, and then to add text.   In my latest one, I combined those two steps into one.  I'll post more as time goes by.

Click to Enlarge

Here's the original.   In 1968, Mitt Romney was on this beach in France instead of one in Vietnam due to a special Mormon deferment.  I personally think avoiding the Vietnam war was a pretty good idea, so I don't begruge Mitt his deferment.  It's worth pointing out though that in 1966 Mitt actually joined a campus demonstration in favor of the Vietnam war draft (great photo in the Daily Mail).  Then he used his special Michigan Mormon Missionary deferment to avoid the draft.  Mitt's two patterns were already apparent in the sixties:  effortless flip flopping, and exploiting rules available to the select few.

Frank Guinta and the $355,000 "loan"

Hi, and welcome to NotIntaGuinta.org.   For my first post, I thought I'd start with Mr. Guinta's campaign finance troubles stemming from his 2010 election campaign.   I've been compiling a list of topics to write about here -- please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington placed Representative Frank Guinta on their 2011 "Most Corrupt" list -- quite a distinction for a congressman in his first year in office.   In question is $355,000 in personal loans Mr. Guinta claimed to have made to his campaign.  As a congressional candidate, Mr. Guinta was legally required to disclose his assets and their disposition. In July 2010, the Nashua Telegraph pointed out that according to his disclosure, Frank Guinta didn't have the money to loan his campaign the amounts he claimed.   CREW documents the case in painstaking detail, with each claim carefully sourced.   I'm just going to hit the highlights here.

If you think this is just a partisan witch-hunt, you may be surprised to learn the charges were initially made by former New Hampshire Representative, Republican Jeb Bradley.  The Politico article begins,

Most people wouldn’t forget about a bank account with a quarter million dollars in it — and if New Hampshire GOP congressional candidate Frank Guinta doesn’t have an explanation for doing just that, he should drop out of the race, former New Hampshire GOP Rep. Jeb Bradley told POLITICO.

From what I can tell Rep. Bradley was not one of Mr. Guinta's opponents in the primary.  Jeb was running for NH state senate at the time.  In this bio, Mr. Guinta is described as having been Mr. Bradley's "former aide," so apparently they know each other quite well.  Referring to the primary, Politico helpfully reports, "Guinta is a favorite of the Washington GOP, taking in leadership PAC contributions from House Majority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor." 

When Mr. Guinta realized he was in trouble, he amended his financial disclosure to include a new account.   The Politico piece cites the Union Leader as the source of the "inadvertent oversight" quote.   

 Guinta, the former mayor of Manchester, included a bank account worth $250,000 to $500,000 on his most recent financial disclosure forms, the Manchester Union Leader reported Thursday. The bank account had never before appeared on his forms, a fact Guinta chalked up to an “inadvertent oversight.” 

Even the very conservative blog redstate.com had a field day with this, comparing Frank Guinta to Charlie Rangel.   It's worth reading the whole thing -- the conservatives were much harder on Frank Guinta than I am.   Here are some samples:

Unless you are Charlie Rangel you do not wake up in the morning, slap your forehead, and remember a $500,000.00 bank account you have failed…twice…to disclose. This is, according to the Union Leader, exactly what has happened in the case of Frank Guinta. 

The Union Leader piece rightly asks why Guinta would even HAVE that much money in a single account given FDIC coverage when you consider his other disclosures which prove him to be fairly savvy in matters of investing money. I ask the same question. Politicians like this, the GOP absolutely does not need right now.

Having been a Mayor and needing to manage big budgets, and with a fairly extensive Political resume, I can’t be expected to believe a $500,000.00 memory hole is just an innocent mistake…especially when you do the math over the course of his campaign.

 The Union Leader noted that the account had been omitted from at least two disclosure forms.  Almost every article at the time talked about how unlikely it would be for anyone to forget an account of this size, especially when it was by far one's largest cash asset.   Said one NH Republican operative, 

It's very important for Republicans to be able to talk about ethics in the general election.  That can't happen if the hand-picked candidates of the NRCC are mysteriously rediscovering bank accounts with half-a-million dollars they forgot they had.

Mr. Guinta's campaign has had differing explanations for the source of the money.   The original Telegraph piece said: 

Mr. Guinta’s campaign manager, Michael Biundo, said Rep. Guinta had liquidated his stock market and mutual fund assets to amass the cash and those transactions would be detailed on a future disclosure report.   

Then Mr. Guinta contradicted that statement by amending his disclosure to include a second Bank of America account valued at between $250,001 and $500,000.   Here's were we get the Union Leader quote: 

In an interview Wednesday, Guinta denied that he has received any loan, maintaining that the savings accrued from years of work and frugal living. His previous reports listed three bank accounts with combined savings of between $17,000 and $80,000. Asked how he could have forgotten to list an account with $250,000 to $500,000 not once but twice in earlier disclosure reports, Guinta called the omission “an inadvertent oversight.”

  Mr. Guinta went on to say he had saved proceeds from successful investing and real estate transactions.  When asked about his campaign manager's statement, Mr. Guinta said Mr. Biundo had been mistaken, and Rep. Guinta himself had been out of town on vacation at the time and unavailable to provide the correct explanation.  The campaign said in a statement that the money for the loans “came from a series of accounts Guinta has had since March of 1996.”   

It's worth reflecting for a minute how hard to swallow Mr. Guinta's story is here.  In response to the gravest threat to his campaign, Mr. Guinta went on vacation, apparently away from all telephones.  We're asked to believe that because Mr. Guinta was unreachable, his campaign manager just made something up about liquidating stocks and mutual funds.   There's no indication the campaign manager was fired or even reprimanded for this egregious error.   And the past due real-estate taxes and water bills resulting in a lien on Mr. Guinta's house in 2007 (while he was mayor!) suggest some money problems that a quarter-million in the bank would have gone a long way toward alleviating.

His primary opponents pointed out that Mr. Guinta's new story could be easily verified by producing old bank statements from the newly disclosed Bank of America account.    I would have thought Mr. Guinta would have jumped at the opportunity to clear his name, while showing the world what a savvy investor he is, accumulating a nice fortune while living on his middle class income.  We're still waiting for these statements.

It was such an incredible year for Republicans that Frank Guinta, despite these serious questions, was elected to represent New Hampshire's First District.  There appears to be an Federal Election Commission investigation underway. 

Speculation on the true source of the money focused on Mr. Guinta's parents, who had sold a house for $800,000 just before the campaign began.   
  
By a weird coincidence, this topic has just heated up in the campaign.   Here's a letter Carol Shea-Porter just posted to facebook.