As for Elizabeth Warren? Barney Frank says: “Let’s fight!”
Is President Obama up for a Senate confirmation fight over Elizabeth Warren? Maybe not right now. But that’s just the sort of rhetorical rumble Barney Frank would like to see.
The former Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who co-authored the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Warren might survive a confirmation battle.
His reasoning? “This is not just the left and the right. The Republican Party is united against healthcare and united against the environment. They’re not united against financial reform.”
Even more to the point: “The Tea Party people didn’t send people to Washington to defend derivatives. I think the fight over Elizabeth Warren would be worth having and I’m not sure how all the Republican senators would vote.”
Warren, of course, is the outspoken, bespectacled Harvard law professor who has struck fear in the hearts of bankers and their friends in Congress by pushing hard for consumer protection in the financial sphere.
Obama put her in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But he has not named her to head the operation, a post that would require confirmation in the Senate, where Democrats retain a slim majority. For now, she serves as a special advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
The confirmation fight Frank envisions sounds a bit like a fantasy match — a fantasy particularly for him, given that he sits in the House of Representatives and not the Senate.
