Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is keeping her eye on the big banks and she knows what they and their Republican friends are up to in Congress.
So the Democratic Senator has an amendment (along with Senators Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, and Tammy Baldwin) to Trade Promotion Authority bill that would ensure that future Presidents don’t use Fast Track authority to undermine Dodd-Frank protections.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, while making the case for her amendment, she busted Republicans for their sneak attacks on Dodd-Frank, saying, “But now if this Fast-Track bill passes, Democrats will be handing Republicans a powerful tool they can use to weaken our financial rules… Fast-track prevents anyone in Congress from offering any amendments to a trade bill and in the Senate with fast-track a trade bill can pass with just 51 votes, not the sixty typically required for major bills.”
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Busted.
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“Sen. Warren delivered a floor speech on May 20, 2015 about her amendment to the Trade Promotion Authority (“Fast Track”) bill. The amendment would block the use of Fast Track to pass trade deals that would weaken financial regulation.”
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Senator Warren said:
In 2008 we suffered through the worst financial crisis, in generations millions of families lost their homes, millions people lost their jobs millions lost their retirement savings, and they watched as the government spent hundreds of billions of their tax dollars to bail out the giant banks.
In response Congress passed some common-sense financial reforms the, Dodd-Frank Act. These new rules crackdown on cheating and lying in the financial market place. They require the big banks to raise more capital so they wouldn’t need a bailout if they started to stumble and they gave our regulators new tools to oversee the biggest banks to make sure that the rules were followed.
Now it’s no surprise that the giant banks don’t like the new rules, so for five years now they’ve been on the attack they sent their armies of lobbyists and lawyers and their Republican friends in Congress to try to roll back the rules to let the Giants
of Wall Street run free again.
Democrats have stood strong to fight of these attacks because we knew that thoughtful rules can help stop the next financial crisis and protect our working families from another Great Recession. But now if this Fast-Track bill passes, Democrats will be handing Republicans a powerful tool they can use to weaken our financial rules. Here’s how it works this fast-track bill, it applies to any trade deal presented to Congress in the next 6 years, through the end of the Obama presidency through the entire leave the next presidency and into the presidency after that.
Fast-track prevents anyone in Congress from offering any amendments to a trade bill and in the Senate with fast-track a trade bill can pass with just 51 votes, not the sixty typically required for major bills.
So what if we have a Republican president in 2016 or 2020?
What I hope that’s not the case but this is a democracy and it’s not up to me most Republicans including ones currently running for president are committed to rolling back financial reforms with fast-track they can weaken our financial rules in a trade deal and then ram it through Congress with just 16 a 51 votes. In the Senate that is a lot easier than the 60 votes needed for a head-on attack on the financial rules through the normal legislative process.
Sen. Warren raised some great points. Fast-Track trade authority will extend into the next president’s time in office. It would be the height of irresponsibility to the future if Democrats were to be so short-sighted as to give a blank check to a future Republican administration. Republicans have tried everything else, so it is a near certainty that they would attempt to use Fast-Track trade authority to get rid of Dodd-Frank.
Putting checks on potential future Republican abuses that are inherent in their party platform is just plain smart. Elizabeth Warren continues to look out for the working people of this country, which is why her amendment deserves to be passed.
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