Barney Frank, former U.S. Congressman
Adam Jeffrey | CNBC
Former Rep. Barney Frank, the resourceful Democrat who was instrumental in a landmark financial reform bill after the 2007-2009 economic crisis, has died, his sister Ann Lewis announced Wednesday. He was 86 years old.
One of the most famous gay politicians of his time, Frank was a Massachusetts congressman who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for more than 30 years and was a liberal who happily worked with Republicans.
“He’s a calm guy,” Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole said in 2011, when Frank was chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Frank, along with then-Senator Chris Dodd, spearheaded a 2010 bill that strengthened banking regulation and consumer protections to avoid a repeat of the 2007 financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession.
The law, known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, established new rules for the previously unregulated off-exchange derivatives market and established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers from predatory and fraudulent activity.
This was considered one of the major successes of President Barack Obama’s second term in Congress.
“If it wasn’t for me, things would have been much worse.”
As the financial crisis unfolded and institutions such as Lehman Brothers’ investment bank collapsed, Mr. Frank was central to Congress’ efforts to save the U.S. banking industry and limit the damage to the broader economy.
He led the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bank bailout that passed the House in 2008.
Under this bailout, the government bought the shares of eight major banks, stabilizing the financial sector. By the time it ended in 2013, TARP had generated a modest $11 billion in benefits for taxpayers as bank stock prices recovered.
But he was criticized by some Democrats for not doing enough to support a housing market in crisis and for allowing bankers to receive large bonuses even as the market crashed.
Frank defended his role in the relief effort despite its flaws. “There was actually a slogan that I was discouraged from using in 2010,” he said at a 2014 C-SPAN event. “It was, ‘If it wasn’t for me, things would have been much worse.’
A rumpled-looking, fast-talking man, Frank was frequently voted both the funniest and smartest member of Congress by Washington magazine’s Capitol Hill staff.
But his reputation as a leading authority on banking regulation was called into question in March 2023 when New York-based Signature Bank, where he was a director, collapsed along with Silicon Valley Bank and was seized by regulators.
First lawmaker to publicly identify as gay
The grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Barnett Frank was born on March 31, 1940 in Bayonne, New Jersey. A high school debate star, he graduated from Harvard University and began working in the Boston mayor’s office in the late 1960s, before becoming an aide to a U.S. Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.
In 1972, Frank ran for office and was elected as a Democrat to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where his first bill was a groundbreaking attempt to ban anti-gay discrimination in housing and employment.
Although the bill was defeated, it was the beginning of Frank’s long career as a champion of liberal causes. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 and remained in the House for 32 years.
Frank’s career was almost derailed by a scandal in 1989 surrounding his relationship with a male prostitute who became his housekeeper, driver, and escort from Frank’s home.
The House Ethics Committee investigated Frank and ruled that he had no knowledge of prostitution in his home, but recommended that all members of the House reprimand him for using parliamentary privilege to dismiss dozens of men’s parking tickets.
The scandal had little impact on voter support for Frank, who in 1987 became the first openly gay member of Congress in U.S. history.
Frank married Jim Ready in 2012, making her the first sitting MP to marry a same-sex partner.
When Frank announced his retirement from Congress in 2013, he quipped: “It’ll be easier because I won’t even have to pretend to be nice to people I don’t like.”
