The House banking scandal broke in early 1992, when it was revealed that the United States House of Representatives allowed members to overdraw their House checking accounts without risk of being penalized by the House bank (actually a clearinghouse).
This is also sometimes known as Rubbergate (from the expressions "rubber check" (bounced check) and "Watergate)". The term is misleading because House checks did not bounce; they were honored because the House Bank provided overdraft protection to its account holders, the Office of the Sergeant at Arms covered the House Bank with no penalties. It was also sometimes known as the "congressional check-kiting scandal".
Read more about House Banking Scandal: The Scandal, Public Exposure
Famous quotes containing the words house, banking and/or scandal:
“Go out of the house to see the moon, and ‘t is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who could ever clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: ‘t is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.”
—George Farquhar (1678–1707)