Openly Gay Rep. Frank Emerges as Congressional Leader
by Kilian Melloy
EDGE Contributor
Tuesday May 13, 2008



Openly gay Mass. Congressman Barney Frank was profiled in a May 13 New York Times article as a mover and a bridge builder among federal lawmakers--in short, a uniter, rather than a divider.

Frank, a Democrat who is the Financial Services Committee’s chairman, has impressed colleagues on the other side of the aisle with his acumen, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper’s story made note of the effort that Frank has put into a bill to offer relief to an estimated two million Americans facing the loss of their homes in the wake of the foreclosure crisis.

Frank, 68 years old and in his 14th term, has emerged as a true Congressional leader, reaching out to Republican colleagues in a way that has left them impressed with his eye for fairness and his capability to find balance between competing needs and ideologies, the New York Times story reported.

Even so, the Bush Administration has made noises about greeting a bill to help out two million imperiled homeowners with a veto.

Summing up the situation with his characteristic way of cutting to the chase, Frank compared the free-market ideology of Bush’s White House responding to a bill to bail out working citizens facing foreclosure to himself as a judge at a Miss America pageant, saying, "if your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job."

Calling Frank "a key deal maker," the New York Times noted that Frank had forged a working relationship wit Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.

More than a deal maker, Congressman Frank has also earned himself a reputation as a wit, noted the Times, which recounted Frank’s fondness for bringing up dire predictions from the 2006 campaign that held him up as an agent of the "radical homosexual agenda," citing the right wing’s claim even as he puts forth a moderate point of view.

The Times cited Frank’s controversial work on a bill to make federal employment non-discrimination law more comprehensive (Frank championed two bills, one to protect gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, with a second bill to follow later that would offer protections based on gender identity and gender expression, a maneuver that enraged many in the GLBT community but got the ENDA bill passed in the House; the Senate has yet to address the bill), but also noted his work on legislation, approved several months ago, designed to stimulate the economy, as well as his work on bills meant to offer relief to those suffering the worst of the housing crisis.

The Times article also noted that the Congressman has set about reworking his bill so as to make it more palatable to an administration that, as the Times article notes, faults American homeowners themselves for having fallen prey to high-interest mortgage plans offered to, among others, those with poor credit.

Not that Frank had much patience for the President’s stance, firing off the remark, quoted in the Times article, that, "No dumb people got America into this problem."

Continued Frank, "You had to be really smart to understand collateralized debt obligation derivatives."

Smarts, the Times noted, are not in short supply for Frank, who holds two degrees from Harvard.

The House gave its approval last week to Frank’s bill to help out beleaguered homeowners, the Times said, but not by a large enough margin to ensure that the measure can withstand a Presidential veto.

Even so, Frank’s work has won him the acclaim of his peers, Republican and Democrat alike. The Times article quoted the man who used to hold Frnak’s position on the Financial Services Committee, Ohio Republican Michael Oxley, as saying, "I think that Barney is misunderstood in some quarters as just being a hard-bound ideological liberal, when in fact his legislative career has been really full of accomplishment and understanding of how markets work and how systems work."

Oxley went on to add, "Just the fact that he was willing to step in and forge a relationship with Hank Paulson, to try to get things done, I think that’s always been Barney’s strength," the Times article said.

Paulson himself was quoted in the article, saying of Frank, "Because he is looking to get things done and make a difference, he focuses on areas of agreement and tries to build on those."

Added Paulson, "He doesn’t waste anybody’s time, your time or his."

Beside, "It’s always more fun to work with someone who has got a sense of humor."

Frank has also won kudos for his equitable approach from conservatives like Dana Rohrabacher, a Calif. representative quoted in the Times article as saying, "I think that I have been treated more fairly, and a number of my Republican colleagues have been treated more fairly, since the Democrats have become the majority than I was treated by my own leadership."

Fairness, to an openly gay man, is an important question, and in debating ENDA late last year, the Times reported, Frank indicated that his concern for fairness was motivated in part by the GLBT experience in America.

Said Frank in advocating for ENDA, "I feel an obligation to 15-year-olds dreading to go to school because of the torments, to people afraid that they will lose their job in a gas station if someone finds out who they love," the Times reported.