Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) (Source: Hyungwon Kang/REUTERS)
Rep. Barney Frank, House architect of the Wall Street reform bill isn't sure that President Obama will fight for Elizabeth Warren to be the permanent chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a key element of the reform law.
Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.), who co-authored the law creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said that if she were nominated, Warren might not be confirmed to head the agency. While Frank argued that's a fight worth having, he cautioned that the president might disagree.
"I think the president is too unwilling to make the kind of fights that don't necessarily win. And I'm not sure she couldn't be [confirmed]," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program....
Frank said it's possible she could win confirmation.
"The Republican Party is united against healthcare, united against the environment. They are not united against financial reform," he said. "The Tea Party people did not send people to Washington to defend derivatives.
"I think the fight over Elizabeth Warren would be worth having and I'm not sure how all the Republican senators would vote."
While Frank was lukewarm on some of the stringent reforms liberal Senators pushed for, he was a defender of the CFPB against his co-author in the Senate, Chris Dodd, who wanted to water it down. In terms of the law's affect on Main Street, the CFPB is probably the key component of the law—it's the most direct connection most Americans will have to it. When they get an easy-to-understand credit card agreement, or sign mortgage papers that don't require a translator, it's because of work Warren has already done.
Warren has been targeted by House Republicans and by Wall Street, via the Wall Street Journal, as has the whole idea of consumer financial protection. Frank might be optimistic in his assessment of Senate Republicans, as they all seem too frightened of teahadist repercussions of straying from the fold. But he's right that this is a fight worth having. Keeping the CFPB viable requires leadership, and Warren's more likely to provide it than just about any other candidate, because she fought so hard to create it in the first place.