{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://himes.house.gov/2026/09/16/icymi-no-administrationmore-communist-than-the-trump-administration-himes-grills-treasury-secretary-bessent-at-hearing/", "ICYMI: \u201cNo Administration\u2026More Communist than the Trump Administration:\u201d Himes Grills Treasury Secretary Bessent at Hearing", "2026-09-16", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "House", "CT", "James A. Himes", "H001047", "himes.house.gov", "himes", "https://himes.house.gov/statements-and-releases/", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 Yesterday, Congressman Jim Himes (CT-04), a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, grilled Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the Trump Administration\u2019s repeated market interventions. Rep. Himes challenged him to explain how the President\u2019s economic agenda \u2013 assuming government ownership stakes in 39 private companies, manipulating prices through unpredictable tariff regimes, and a failed intervention in the bond market \u2013 differs from the core tenets of communism.\n\nAn excerpt of Rep. Himes\u2019 line of questioning of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a House Financial Services Committee Hearing held on September 15, 2026:\n\nHIMES: The government now owns thirty-nine companies. The government has imposed tariffs. I don\u2019t like tariffs. Whether you think they\u2019re a good idea or bad idea, they are an intervention in the free market\u2026\n\nThe President recently offered five thousand dollars for a vote. Now,to thosein the legal world, that would be called a bribe, but you could think of it as an intervention in political markets. And by the way, I have no doubt that if I walk down there right now and said, \u201cI will pay you five thousand dollars if you focus your buying on the three-year treasury,\u201d that conversation would end with me in handcuffs.\n\nBut the question I have for you, Mr. Secretary, relates to your intervention in the markets. And I\u2019m not going to ask you to agree with me here, but I can think of no administration in the last 50 years that is quite as communist as the Trump administration. Constant interventions in the operations of the free market.", 1, "2026-09-17T09:52:05Z", "2026-09-17T09:53:00Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://himes.house.gov/2026/09/16/icymi-no-administrationmore-communist-than-the-trump-administration-himes-grills-treasury-secretary-bessent-at-hearing/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7187470328062773, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}