[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – The two men who come to the US Senate have a lot of money. They have millions of borrowers.
US Senator Ted Cruz and US Rep. Beto O. Rourke of D-El Paso each earn $ 174,000 as members of Congress. However, a review of the most recent financial disclosure forms, each submitted to the United States Congress, showed that the two men had assets and liabilities well above those of the average Texan.
O'Rourke and his wife listed assets ranging from $ 3.5 million to just over $ 16 million, mostly from commercial and rental real estate, a stake in the software company, and candidate's technology and the trust fund of his wife. Their liabilities – mainly from their property holdings – amount to between $ 1.3 million and $ 5.7 million.
Cruz and his wife list holdings of between $ 2 million and $ 5 million from stocks, mutual funds, his pension plan from the law firm, and from the bank. an important loan to Cruz's 2012 campaign in the Senate, which can not be fully repaid under the federal laws governing campaign financing. . Cruz's commitments could range from $ 1 million to $ 5.3 million in the broad ranges included in the candidate disclosure forms.
Since federal applicants do not have to report the exact amounts of their income, financial assets and liabilities, it is not possible to calculate their net worth from the disclosure forms. The figures come from the financial information that was filed in 2018 but covers their finances in 2017.
But Roll Call's annual report on "Congressional Wealth" places O'Rourke in the 97th of 530 for 2016, while Cruz ranks 332.
A graduate of Princeton and Harvard, Cruz has spent much of his career in the public service – a Bush administration official, Solicitor General of Texas, and a US senator.
His wife, Heidi Cruz, is the managing director of Goldman Sachs, the powerful investment bank. The couple's disclosure report gives little information about his salary. It simply states that it exceeds $ 1,000, but it is reasonable to assume that it is the breadwinner of the family.
Virtually all of the couple's assets are equities and mutual funds. Several are worth six figures, including shares in a BlackRock fund and a retirement plan from Cruz's tenure as a lawyer at the Morgan Lewis law firm. Les Cruzes paid at least $ 33,000 in dividends and interest in 2017.
But his biggest asset on the list is part of a $ 1.2 million loan that he himself granted for his campaign in the 2012 Senate – at the same time. At the time, Cruz had said that he and his wife had spent their life savings on his long Senate candidacy.
Congressional candidates often give loans to their own campaigns, but they do not always get that money back. In August, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said that because of the limits imposed by the federal government on candidates for the use of their campaign accounts to repay their loans, it is unlikely that Cruz could never recover the balance of this loan, which amounts to more than half a million dollars.
At the same time, Cruz owes Goldman Sachs between $ 100,001 and $ 250,000, which is probably the balance of a loan of up to $ 500,000 that he had received from his wife's company in the course of his 2012 campaign in the Senate. This loan became a campaign issue during Cruz's unsuccessful bid for the 2016 presidential election, when the New York Times announced that he had not reported the problem. Cruz called this a minor oversight, while his critics at the time argued that the loan belied Cruz 's image as a grassroots alien.
The most important commitment of the couple is a Bank of America mortgage loan worth $ 1 million to $ 5 million.
The fortune of the O Rourkes is based on real estate
After spending his youth in a group, O'Rourke hung up his bass and founded Stanton Street Technology Group, a software and technology company. His wife, Amy Hoover Sanders O'Rourke, sold a $ 100,000 to $ 1 million stake in the company in 2017.
He was also a partner at Imperial Arms LLC, a real estate company owning a rental property in El Paso valued at over one million dollars. O & # 39; Rourkes sold the property in early 2017.
In addition, O'Rourke estimated that he owned in part Peppertree Square Ltd., a shopping center located in El Paso – a gift from his mother in 2012 – between $ 2 million and $ 10 million.
According to the documents, Sanders O'Rourke had an income of about $ 65,000 in 2017. She had earned $ 53,000 as a consultant for the Council for Regional Economic Development and Development. Council Education, a group of education policy based in El Paso and related to Woody Hunt, local philanthropist and political donor. She earned about $ 12,000 from the Stanton Street Technology Group before selling her stake in late March 2017.
O & # 39; Rourkes realized capital gains, rents, interest, dividends and share sales of approximately $ 340,000 in 2017 and also included among their assets a trust fund for Sanders O'Rourke's name worth $ 1 to $ 5 million. His father, Bill Sanders, earned his fortune in real estate.
The couple posted more than $ 1.3 million in liabilities, mainly in the form of mortgages. The most important liability is mortgages of at least $ 1,050,000 on Imperial Arms and Peppertree rental properties. The O'Rourkes also have a mortgage of at least $ 250,000. And finally, they announced a commercial loan for Stanton Street worth at least $ 15,000.
O 'Rourke also saw his finances questioned during the race: Cruz's camp highlighted the purchase of Twitter by O'Rourke the day the media company In 2013, the US House Ethics Committee warned members to avoid investing in the first public business offerings. especially Twitter, because "participation in IPOs (…) is generally not accessible to the general public". In an interview with El Paso Times, O'Rourke said he did not see the memo until his broker bought the shares and then sold them two days later.
Legistorm, a non-partisan website following the revelations of Congress, reported this violation to O & # Rourke, who brought the case before the US House Ethics Committee and has sent a check to the federal treasury for the amount of his winnings from all IPOs in which he participated. .
"I apologize to the House of Representatives and the people I represent for failing to show due diligence," he wrote on Facebook at the time. "I will be much more rigorous in the future regarding financial transactions and will do my best to ensure that I am in full compliance with all the rules regarding members of Congress."
Source link
