Senator Warren Warns Regulatory Relief Bill Will Cause Fresh Round of Bailouts

Senator Elizabeth Warren said over the weekend that a bill that would provide relief from the regulation placed on the banking industry after the financial crisis of 2008 could result in a new series of government bailouts of companies.

Citing comments Warren, the Democrat Senator from Massachusetts, made on “Meet the Press” Sunday (March 11), Bloomberg reported Warren said the bill doesn’t help consumers. “I don’t think a bill like that is good for anybody in America,” she said on the NBC show, referring to a bill that would overhaul the Dodd-Frank Act. She said it would make it easier for banks to discriminate in the home mortgage market and hit minorities with excessive fees. The report noted that on the Senate floor last week, Warren proposed 17 amendments to the bill, which she said hurts consumer protections. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Warren said the bill “puts us at greater risk that there will be another taxpayer bailout. That there will be another crash,” and warned on “Fox News Sunday” that Americans shouldn’t forget that millions of people in the U.S. lost their jobs, homes and retirement savings in the 2008 Great Recession.  Warren also said she is not running for president in 2020. “I am running for the United States Senate,” she said on NBC when asked about a presidential run. “That’s where I’m focused.”

Mike Crapo, the Idaho Republican and Senate Banking Committee Chairman, sponsored the bill, which is seen as a compromise because it doesn’t roll back as much as Republicans and Wall Street banks want. It does provide regulatory relief for the small and regional banks that have been struggling under the new rules and raises the amount before a lender is deemed too big to fail. More moderate Democrats support the bill, noted the report. “This isn’t a Democrats or Republicans or blue states or red states” issue, Warren said on NBC. “I think we do better as a country and we do better as a Congress when we’re there to fight for working people and not for Wall Street banks.”

This coming week the Senate is expected to vote on the bill. It’s not clear how many Republicans in the house will back it since it doesn’t help lenders out too much, noted the report.