The NYT goes through a glowing profile of Elizabeth Warren's efforts in regards to creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency and hints that Obama will probably place her in that position if it makes it through the House and the Senate.
Warren pushing for Consumer Financial Protection Agency
She's trying to get the Consumer Financial Protection Agency through the House and the Senate and this fight is only going to get more heated from here:
Ms. Warren’s climactic hour begins now: three years after she hatched the idea for the agency, the White House has backed it, the House of Representatives has approved it and its passage in the Senate is a top Democratic priority. Many fans, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, hope Ms. Warren will run it. But even if the agency is approved, it might be far weaker than what she envisioned, thanks to fierce opposition from the financial industry.
This is where the next fight's going to be. It's going to begin after the break. It's a fight to save the Consumer Protection Agency. There will be numerous amendments and attempts to stall it but she's got the President on her side along with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
Six years ago, Ms. Warren was one of the few guests at a Harvard Law School faculty reception for Barack Obama, an alum then running for a United States Senate seat in Illinois. He greeted her with two words: "predatory lending," signaling he knew her work. He began to talk about dicey mortgages and abusive credit products and their shattering effect on families, Ms. Warren recalled. Finally, she cut him off.
"You had me at ‘predatory lending,’ " she said. A few years later, Mr. Obama was promoting her idea for a consumer agency on the presidential campaign trail.
In regards to how the fight is starting, let's look at Neal Wolin who spoke in front of the Chamber of Commerce, who has been spending about a million dollars a day attacking the CFPA, at lunch, per the WSJ, the Obama official brought his own lunch: A Knuckle sandwich.
Wolin at the Chamber of Commerce
He repeatedly pounded the Chamber’s lobbying and advertising blitz against the White House’s financial regulatory overhaul, accusing them of being misleading, dishonest, and "backward."
He delivered his broadside standing on a podium within the U.S. Chamber while some of the group’s officials sat in nearby tables aghast at the pummeling.
"Despite the urgent and undeniable need for reform, the Chamber of Commerce has launched a $3 million advertising campaign against it," Mr. Wolin said. "That campaign is not designed to improve the House and Senate bills. It is designed to defeat them."
This is the fight that needs to happen and we need to be the ones who have to do it. Elizabeth Warren is championing that fight, but without us calling and fighting for it, all they hear is the echo of the Chamber.