Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has been hammering her Republican opponent, incumbent Scott Brown of Massachusetts, for “undermining” the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill Brown helped pass, even though Warren expressed agreement with Brown’s proposed changes to the bill during the debate in 2010.
In a campaign statement Monday, Warren blasted Brown for his behind-the-scenes maneuvering to loosen the banking regulations in Dodd-Frank, after the financial regulatory bill passed.
“Scott Brown is trying to make it easier for the big banks to keep hammering consumers when we ought to be figuring out how to take away the hammer and protect consumers,” said Warren in her statement, referring to the Boston Globe story that reported on the details. “Scott Brown is part of the guerrilla war that’s undermining financial reform and weakening critical protections for consumers. We ought to be holding these big banks accountable, not letting them off the hook.”
But on July 15, 2010, in the middle of the debate over Dodd-Frank, Brown’s legislative director Nat Hoopes reportedly had a 20-minute conversation with Warren on Capitol Hill in which they discussed Brown’s ideas about improving the legislation. In a follow-up email to Warren, Hoopes wrote:
Warren wrote back to Hoopes to express her agreement (emphasis added):
Now that Warren is running against Brown, she seems to have changed her tune.
