Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 White House dreams may have been dashed, but the coronavirus crisis has elevated some of her key policy proposals and financial regulation expertise again.
The Massachusetts senator, a Harvard Law School professor a decade ago, was the driving force behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She also was chairwoman of the congressional body providing oversight of the federal government’s 2008 credit crunch response, and used her experience to call for “big structural change” during her yearlong 2020 presidential campaign.
While Warren’s bid didn’t gain traction, even in her home state, her ideas are being reconsidered as the country braces for an economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Sen. Warren’s experience with the 2008 financial crisis and its fallout uniquely positions her to help craft an economic response to the coronavirus that doesn’t just benefit big business and the wealthiest Americans,” Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Daniella Gibbs Leger told the Washington Examiner.
Although Leger said all Democrats were “demanding that the most vulnerable be at the heart of any relief package,” Warren is taking a prominent role as she and her colleagues clash with their Republican counterparts over how best to blunt the economic downturn.
Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee, name-checked Warren late Sunday when defending his party’s opposition to a GOP-led $2 trillion COVID-19 economic stimulus package over its lack of protections for workers in comparison to big business.
“We should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn’t happen again,” he tweeted.
The two-term vice president
parroted her campaign rhetoric when he charged the Trump administration and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for “trying to put corporate bailouts ahead of families,” describing $500 billion tentatively earmarked for industry assistance as a “slush fund” “with almost no conditions.”
Warren, herself, has agreed to more national television interviews. She got into a heated exchange on Bloomberg Television Monday morning over the relief package when the host asked her whether she wanted to be responsible for “stopping people from getting their checks to meet their rent at the end of the month.” The measure contains provisions for direct cash payments of about $3,000 per family.
“Excuse me, the reason this bill has not gone through is because of Republican senators and because of a Republican leadership that pretended to negotiate for three days with Democrats, and then, at the end of that time, basically introduced their own bill, their own bill that did not have compromises, and did not make sure that the money is going down to the grassroots,” she said.
Warren and her caucus would prefer more help directed to the public via unemployment insurance, Social Security, and disability programs, as well as to small businesses hurt because of the outbreak. They would also like “strings” attached to the $500 billion in aid assigned to corporate industries.
Democrats continue to grapple with the policy and politics connected to the coronavirus. While early in the process, President Trump averages 47.6% approval to 46.6% disapproval of his reaction to the pandemic, according to RealClearPolitics data.
