Elizabeth Warren is ready to name and shame. After 10 long months spent crafting a brand-new federal agency in her image and likeness, years before that willing the institution into statutory existence, only to be passed over on Sunday in favor of Richard Cordray just as the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving out of beta, Warren, on a press call late yesterday afternoon, was eager to share her clarity on who’s to blame for the especially precarious position the new federal-friend-to-the-American-consumer now finds itself in.
Those enemies of Warren, of the CFPB? Republicans, first and foremost, namely Senate Banking ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL) and the forty three other Republican senators who signed a letter to Obama in May raising heck over the “unfettered authority” the CFPB had supposedly been granted by the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in the wake of the mortgage meltdown. That’s no surprise. But Warren’s also annoyed with the press for buying the GOP’s story that it’s simply a more efficient consumer advocate they’re eager for, when really what Republicans want is for the CFPB to die an early death. She also blames her own political naiveté. She’s been “too busy busting [her] tail” in starting an agency, she says, and didn’t pay all that much attention to those inside the Beltway sharpening their knives. Some heard those noises over at 1600 Pennsylvania. Perhaps she’s heard the chatter that Obama was more sold in public than in private on her eventual appointment as CFPB’s first-ever director. But Warren gives Obama and fellow Democrats a pass.
“Let me put it this way,” said Warren on yesterday’s call. “I’m saving all the rocks in my pockets for Republicans. And if that’s too partisan for you, then shame on me.”
It is beyond me why anyone would be against her running against Scott Brown (except for the lunatics, who would be upset she wouldn’t attack Democrats enough). You want more and better Democrats, she’s right there. And she’s tough. And if she wins, Harry Reid better make damned sure she is on every committee that Richard Shelby is on.