Mark Lyons for The New York Times
Representative Andy Barr, right, with Speaker John A. Boehner. Mr. Barr, along with his fellow freshmen Ann Wagner and Tom Cotton, has raised more money from finance industry PACs than many longtime House members have.
WASHINGTON — Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky with little experience in the intricacies of Wall Street, was among the lucky House freshmen to secure a seat on the powerful Financial Services Committee.
Now, half a year into his first term, he has emerged as a telling example of why the panel is sometimes called “the cash committee” — a place, critics say, where there are big incentives for freshmen to do special favors for the industry.
Mr. Barr, 40, a first-time elected official, has raised nearly as much money this year from political action committees run by major banks, credit unions and insurance companies as longtime lawmakers like Speaker John A. Boehner and other party leaders.
The flood of financial industry cash — $ 150,000 in political action committee donations to Mr. Barr in just six months — is hardly an accident.
One afternoon in April, Mr. Barr hosted credit union lobbyists and executives in his House office just before a committee hearing, promising that he would help protect a federal tax break worth $ 500 million a year, the executives said. Last month, he introduced legislation to eliminate a new federal rule intended to prevent banks from issuing mortgages to customers who could not afford to repay the debt — a measure pushed by bank lobbyists who had visited his office.
“People support him because they agree with him,” Catherine Gatewood, Mr. Barr’s spokeswoman, said after he declined requests for an interview.
But Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat who served on the Financial Services Committee until January, when he left Congress, said the intense focus on fund-raising by freshman lawmakers like Mr. Barr is a potent sign of the harmful way that money distorts priorities in Washington, for both Republicans and Democrats.
“Freshmen are pushed and pushed and pushed to raise money — it’s how they are judged by the leadership and the political establishment in Washington,” said Mr. Miller, who added that he felt the same pressure when he joined the Financial Services Committee in 2003 as a freshman. “It’s only natural that it has got to be on your mind that a vote one way or other is going to affect the ability to raise money.”
After the elections in November, Democratic Party leaders gave a PowerPoint presentation urging their freshman members to spend as much as four hours a day making fund-raising calls while in Washington, and an additional hour of “strategic outreach” holding breakfasts or “meet and greets” with possible financial supporters. That adds up to more time than these first-term lawmakers were advised to spend on Congressional business.
Much of this reflects the political reality that freshmen like Mr. Barr, particularly those from districts in which neither party dominates, are considered vulnerable. And that explains why a seat on the Financial Services Committee is so coveted.
Political action committees — set up by lobbying firms, unions, corporations and other groups trying to push their agenda in Congress — have donated more money to Financial Services Committee members in the first six months of this year than to members of any other committee. The $ 9.4 million total is nearly $ 2 million more than the total for the Armed Services Committee, the only House panel with more members.
With so many lawmakers clamoring to be on the Financial Services Committee, it has grown to 61 members from 44 since 1980, forcing the installation of four tiered rows of seats in the Rayburn House Office Building — with the first row of lawmakers on the floor, just in front of the tables used for witnesses.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, remains the top recipient of donations from industry PACs this year, taking in $ 282,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks the influence of money in politics. But three Republican freshmen — Mr. Barr and Representatives Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ann Wagner of Missouri — have raised more money from industry PACs than many longtime committee members like Representative Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican who served as the panel’s chairman until the end of last year.
The imbalance is apparent on the Democratic side as well. Each of the seven freshman Democrats on the committee has raised more industry PAC money so far this year than the committee’s top Democrat, Representative Maxine Waters of California, who has had a testy relationship with the industry.
These freshman Democrats joined this year with Republicans on the committee — over the objection of Ms. Waters and the Obama administration — to support measures advocated by Wall Street banks that would roll back some of the strictest provisions of the landmark Dodd-Frank financial regulations, which were passed in 2010 in the aftermath of the global recession.
A spokeswoman for Representative Patrick Murphy, a Florida Democrat who has taken in more industry PAC money than any other Democratic freshman, $ 53,500, said his votes had been cast based on what he believed was in the best interest of his constituents, not to please potential contributors. But she agreed that the pressure to raise money was intense.
“The system is what the system is,” said Tiffany Muller, Mr. Murphy’s deputy chief of staff, adding that her boss supported changing campaign finance rules.
Mr. Barr’s industry outreach started even before he was sworn in to office — at a “debt retirement” luncheon at Charlie Palmer Steak, two blocks from the Capitol, that he co-sponsored with a lobbyist who represents companies like Bank of America and MasterCard International. Tens of thousands of dollars came in to help Mr. Barr eliminate his campaign debt, including large checks from the American Bankers Association and PNC Bank, among others.
For Freshmen in the House, Seats of Plenty
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