Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Thursday stood by her tough criticism of her Democratic colleagues who voted to begin debate on a deregulation effort aimed at scaling back rules passed after the 2008 financial crisis.
Seventeen members of the Democratic caucus voted to advance the bill on Tuesday. Warren called them out in a tweet.
“Senate Republicans voted unanimously for the #BankLobbyistAct,” Warren wrote in response to a tweet with the names of her colleagues. “But this bill wouldn’t be on the path to becoming law without the support of these Democrats. The Senate just voted to increase the chances your money will be used to bail out big banks again.”
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On Thursday, Warren went to the Senate floor to attempt to convince her colleagues not to back the legislation and offered a series of 17 amendments to the bill.
In addition, she wrote a Medium post specifically defending her choice to call out Democrats.
“I call it like I see it on the #BankLobbyistAct,” Warren declared in the post. “Saying Democrats are helping to roll back rules on big banks doesn’t make me the most popular kid on the team. But Massachusetts didn’t send me here to fight for big banks. The people of Massachusetts sent me here to fight for them.”
Warren had received some flack for going after her fellow Democrats—most notably from former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who, of course, helped write the Dodd-Frank legislation that carries his name.
“These are people who voted against [conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil] Gorsuch, most of them,” Frank told The Boston Globe. “They support abortion rights, LGBT rights, most of them are strong on the climate change issue. To let a fairly small difference over one issue provoke an angry fight is self-defeating for our fight to win back the Congress.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a fellow progressive in the Senate, blasted the legislation as well but did not specifically fault Democrats for it moving to debate.
“Let’s remember who controls the United States Senate; it’s not the Democrats,” Sanders told The Daily Beast. “And the American people right now, I really believe, are shaking their heads.”
