Thursday, March 21, 2013 6:00:10 PM
Mrs. Warren goes to Washington
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s credentials, support, and savvy make her almost untouchable — and she knows it.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | March 21, 2013
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | March 21, 2013
Elizabeth Warren was the only senator on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, aside from the chair and ranking minority, to show up at last Thursday's hearing on indexing the minimum wage to inflation. This was unfortunate for the two witnesses representing the National Restaurant Association in opposition of the idea, because it meant that every 15 minutes it was Warren's turn to ask questions again.
She carved them up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Has their association ever, in its history, supported an increase in the minimum wage, Warren asked — and if not, does that mean they believe it should still be one dollar an hour? Where, she inquired, had the extra $14.75 per hour gone, representing the difference since 1960 between increased worker productivity and the increase in the minimum wage? And which should we take as more meaningful, your speculation about what might happen at your store, or this study of what did happen at tens of thousands of companies in states that adopted minimum-wage indexing?
It was quite a brazen performance for a Senate freshman, let alone one not yet three months into her first job in elected office. But it was relatively tame, compared with Warren's behavior in other recent hearings, where the victims were not such obvious foils for a Democrat. Like a trial lawyer exposing a witness's false alibi, Warren has used Banking Committee hearings to fluster Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury and Comptroller executives, and a Securities and Exchange Commission nominee — and by proxy, Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder, whose approach to financial institutions Warren viciously summed up as "too big for trial."
This is not the head-down, limelight-avoiding playbook typically followed by Senate freshmen — especially celebrities, such as Hillary Clinton in 2001 or Barack Obama in 2005.
In fact, it is the kind of behavior that would get a lot of new lawmakers smacked down hard, or marginalized into ineffectiveness. Few new Senators behave this way — other than the occasional bomb-thrower more interested in headlines than results. (Ted Cruz of Texas currently fits this category.)
But Warren has an independence and authority that frees her to be outspoken without getting alienated. She can embarrass the Barack Obama administration for failing to send bankers to jail without fear.
>> SIDEBAR: William "Mo" Cowan takes his turn <<
http://blog.thephoenix.com/blogs/talkingpolitics/archive/2013/03/21/mo-takes-his-turn.aspx
She can also react with righteous outrage when I asked about Obama's recent support of "chained Consumer Price Index (CPI)," which liberals view as a cut to Social Security benefits. When I suggest that most brand-new senators would not undercut their own party's president that way, she responds: "Better I should say this now, than wait to have anybody surprised about it later on."
There's a reason for her confidence: not only does Warren have tremendous credibility on the issues, she is simply too popular, with too broad and devoted a following, for anyone to threaten — up to and including the Obama administration.
She is not a career politician, entangled by the favors and deals traded on her way up the ladder. Some $25 million of the $41 million raised for her campaign came not PACs or big-dollar donors, but from individuals giving less than $200 each — an almost unprecedented national grassroots following, who stand ready to move as one to help Warren and her allies, and to oppose those seen as obstacles.
That gives an extraordinary amount of independent power to a woman who isn't the least bit shy about wielding it.
She is, in her own way, too big to fail.
Modified Clinton strategy
"I don't want to wake up in six years and say: 'I scattered my fire across a wide range and changed nothing.' No. For me, that's a nightmare. It's something I've thought about every single day."
Senator Warren, a youthful and energetic 63, has an infectious intensity in conversation; she veers almost manically from righteous anger to passionate empathy to raucous humor, but it all flows easily and almost forces a connection with her audience — in this case, a reporter receiving a rare sit-down interview in her temporary Senate office in the Dirksen building courtyard extension.
Warren is among a group of "silent senators" called out by Politico for shunning the national media. That's not a shock to Massachusetts journalists, who complained throughout last year's campaign about their lack of direct access. It is also, undoubtedly, part of a strategy to avoid the appearance of hogging the limelight — and to heighten attention for moments when she does want to be heard.
Politico and its ilk matter to the chattering Beltway classes, but at this moment Warren sees her constituents as the Massachusetts voters; the middle- and working-class people across America; and the 99 other senators who can assist or thwart her efforts.
Those reporters she ignores in the hallways and tunnels are just a part of the huge demand for a piece of Warren. She is perhaps the hottest property in Washington right now; everyone wants her to take a meeting on their issue, speak at their event, or co-sponsor their bill. And most of all, her fellow Democrats want her to lend her name, her mailing list, or her presence to their campaign fundraising effort.
Meanwhile, she's taking charge of constituent services, without a senior senator to lean on. And she is.putting together a staff — wisely starting with a highly respected duo of Mindy Myers as chief of staff and Roger Lau as state director. Myers ran Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's office before managing Warren's campaign last year; Lau, a long-time John Kerry hand, has been a fixture of Bay State Democratic politics for more than a decade.
Pulled in all these directions, Warren is limiting her public activity to things directly focused on the her key issues — which included, the day I interviewed her in Washington, the minimum-wage hearing as well as a speech to the Consumer Federation of America.
"It's basically what I ran on," she says. "The economics of America's working families, and making the banking system work."
It's a modified Hillary Clinton strategy, says Jim Manley, senior director at Quinn Gillespie & Associates in Washington, and former Ted Kennedy press secretary. Warren can "pick and choose" when to speak, he says — for example, at the Banking Committee hearings. "Those are the issues she knows best."
"I think she has the confidence that comes from having been a leader on these kinds of consumer issues for years," says Minnesota Senator Al Franken — a progressive colleague on the HELP Committee who knows a thing or two about arriving in Washington as a celebrity senator. "She is principled and very brilliant on these issues. She's picking her spots, and she's certainly not shy about speaking her mind."
"Why wait," says Massachusetts Congresswoman Niki Tsongas. After Warren campaigned on her knowledge, credibility, and passion on the critical topic of inequities in the financial industry, "we'd be disappointed if she didn't do that."
"She's doing exactly what we expected her to do," says Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), whose nearly one million members were a huge fundraising source for Warren's campaign. "She is breathing new oxygen into the room around banking accountability."
Method behind it
Warren clearly relishes being a US Senator, and is getting early rave reviews. "She brings a new perspective to the Senate," says Thomas Quinn, partner at Venerable LLP, and a lobbyist on financial issues. "We have so many lifetime politicians. She brings a real detailed knowledge of the issues, especially with banking."
But it is probably not her dream job. That was the one she had briefly, running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) she helped create in 2010. A senator is just one of a hundred, in a slow-moving body where being right means very little.
She talks a lot about finding the "tools in the toolbox" available to her as senator: "In the first couple of months, it feels like I can see where it's possible to make a difference."
For an example of how this works, look at what happened earlier this month, after Warren broke out the "too big for trial" line.
PCCC quickly sent video from that hearing to its members; the clip shot around social media. An accompanying petition, calling for stronger prosecution of financial industry scofflaws, has gathered more than 50,000 signatures. That, and the accompanying media attention, brought a lot of pressure to bear on the regulatory agencies and prosecutors. Warren notes with pleasure an early-March American Banker magazine headline, warning that boards at financial institutions "must brace for tougher enforcement environment."
But in addition, that PCCC petition contained a check-off box, to be marked by those who have personally been helped by the CFPB. That question was included, according to Green, because Warren suggested in an earlier meeting that they begin preparing for the upcoming battle over Richard Cordray's re-nomination as the bureau's director. Republicans are explicitly trying to block Cordray because he is effective at running the bureau; they want to see it de-fanged, or at least run by someone uninterested in actually protecting consumers from abuses of financial corporations.
"We thought we'd find 10 people" through the check-off box, Green tells me. Instead, they have collected more than 1000 personal stories, which they are now prepared to use in the campaign to persuade senators to back Cordray.
Green calls this collaboration with Warren an "inside/outside" strategy of pressure and persuasion. Warren calls it "putting wind in our own sails."
"In this case, putting wind in sails for accountability by the big financial institutions," she says. "And that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. I believe it's what the American people want, and frankly it's what will make the banking system safer."
Not going rogue
That powerful following is not limited to PCCC-type lefties – plenty of other groups, including EMILY's List, have similar citizen armies devoted to Warren.
It won't be easy maintaining their allegiance, as she navigates the compromise-filled world of the Senate. As I sat in her lobby, aides handled an unending string of phone calls, many chastising her from the left. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't use profanity, sir," aide Tim Bialecki said to one caller complaining about Warren's vote in favor of confirming John Brennan to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Warren also needs to do business with colleagues who might not appreciate her rousing of the rabble.
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, who serves on the Banking Committee, says that despite Warren's sharp bite in those YouTubed public confrontations, she has taken a collegial approach with her colleagues that will serve her well. She has built upon her existing relationships, and forged new ones — even co-sponsoring a bill, introduced last week, with Republicans Bob Corker of Tennessee and David Vitter of Louisiana, and moderate Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, on housing-finance reform.
>> SIDEBAR: William "Mo" Cowan takes his turn <<
"She is one of the most knowledgeable people to enter the Senate in a long time," says Reed. "She is thoughtful, methodical, pleasant, and she wants to co-operate." Warren's sharp exchanges in hearings, he says, are "not just an exercise in rhetoric."
"Behind the scenes she is being herself," Franken says. "She has strong progressive views. But, in her interactions she's a lovely, nice person."
She also has the advantage of being able to work on a six-year time horizon — and, realistically, as long as she wants to stay there.
And that might be what scares her Wall Street enemies the most. There is no amount of money, or scurrilous attacks, likely to cause her downfall at the polls.
That will only make them more eager to find other ways to halt her efforts. They will counter-attack at every opportunity — as with the current attempt to derail Cordray's re-nomination — and undoubtedly plan longer-term strategies to limit her sway.
After all, they are supposed to be too big to fail, not her. It will take much longer than three months to see which of them will ultimately left standing.
>> DAVID@DAVIDSBERNSTEIN.COM :: @DBERNSTEIN
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/153162-mrs-warren-goes-to-washington/
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s credentials, support, and savvy make her almost untouchable — and she knows it.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | March 21, 2013
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | March 21, 2013
Elizabeth Warren was the only senator on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, aside from the chair and ranking minority, to show up at last Thursday's hearing on indexing the minimum wage to inflation. This was unfortunate for the two witnesses representing the National Restaurant Association in opposition of the idea, because it meant that every 15 minutes it was Warren's turn to ask questions again.
She carved them up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Has their association ever, in its history, supported an increase in the minimum wage, Warren asked — and if not, does that mean they believe it should still be one dollar an hour? Where, she inquired, had the extra $14.75 per hour gone, representing the difference since 1960 between increased worker productivity and the increase in the minimum wage? And which should we take as more meaningful, your speculation about what might happen at your store, or this study of what did happen at tens of thousands of companies in states that adopted minimum-wage indexing?
It was quite a brazen performance for a Senate freshman, let alone one not yet three months into her first job in elected office. But it was relatively tame, compared with Warren's behavior in other recent hearings, where the victims were not such obvious foils for a Democrat. Like a trial lawyer exposing a witness's false alibi, Warren has used Banking Committee hearings to fluster Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury and Comptroller executives, and a Securities and Exchange Commission nominee — and by proxy, Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder, whose approach to financial institutions Warren viciously summed up as "too big for trial."
This is not the head-down, limelight-avoiding playbook typically followed by Senate freshmen — especially celebrities, such as Hillary Clinton in 2001 or Barack Obama in 2005.
In fact, it is the kind of behavior that would get a lot of new lawmakers smacked down hard, or marginalized into ineffectiveness. Few new Senators behave this way — other than the occasional bomb-thrower more interested in headlines than results. (Ted Cruz of Texas currently fits this category.)
But Warren has an independence and authority that frees her to be outspoken without getting alienated. She can embarrass the Barack Obama administration for failing to send bankers to jail without fear.
>> SIDEBAR: William "Mo" Cowan takes his turn <<
http://blog.thephoenix.com/blogs/talkingpolitics/archive/2013/03/21/mo-takes-his-turn.aspx
She can also react with righteous outrage when I asked about Obama's recent support of "chained Consumer Price Index (CPI)," which liberals view as a cut to Social Security benefits. When I suggest that most brand-new senators would not undercut their own party's president that way, she responds: "Better I should say this now, than wait to have anybody surprised about it later on."
There's a reason for her confidence: not only does Warren have tremendous credibility on the issues, she is simply too popular, with too broad and devoted a following, for anyone to threaten — up to and including the Obama administration.
She is not a career politician, entangled by the favors and deals traded on her way up the ladder. Some $25 million of the $41 million raised for her campaign came not PACs or big-dollar donors, but from individuals giving less than $200 each — an almost unprecedented national grassroots following, who stand ready to move as one to help Warren and her allies, and to oppose those seen as obstacles.
That gives an extraordinary amount of independent power to a woman who isn't the least bit shy about wielding it.
She is, in her own way, too big to fail.
Modified Clinton strategy
"I don't want to wake up in six years and say: 'I scattered my fire across a wide range and changed nothing.' No. For me, that's a nightmare. It's something I've thought about every single day."
Senator Warren, a youthful and energetic 63, has an infectious intensity in conversation; she veers almost manically from righteous anger to passionate empathy to raucous humor, but it all flows easily and almost forces a connection with her audience — in this case, a reporter receiving a rare sit-down interview in her temporary Senate office in the Dirksen building courtyard extension.
Warren is among a group of "silent senators" called out by Politico for shunning the national media. That's not a shock to Massachusetts journalists, who complained throughout last year's campaign about their lack of direct access. It is also, undoubtedly, part of a strategy to avoid the appearance of hogging the limelight — and to heighten attention for moments when she does want to be heard.
Politico and its ilk matter to the chattering Beltway classes, but at this moment Warren sees her constituents as the Massachusetts voters; the middle- and working-class people across America; and the 99 other senators who can assist or thwart her efforts.
Those reporters she ignores in the hallways and tunnels are just a part of the huge demand for a piece of Warren. She is perhaps the hottest property in Washington right now; everyone wants her to take a meeting on their issue, speak at their event, or co-sponsor their bill. And most of all, her fellow Democrats want her to lend her name, her mailing list, or her presence to their campaign fundraising effort.
Meanwhile, she's taking charge of constituent services, without a senior senator to lean on. And she is.putting together a staff — wisely starting with a highly respected duo of Mindy Myers as chief of staff and Roger Lau as state director. Myers ran Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's office before managing Warren's campaign last year; Lau, a long-time John Kerry hand, has been a fixture of Bay State Democratic politics for more than a decade.
Pulled in all these directions, Warren is limiting her public activity to things directly focused on the her key issues — which included, the day I interviewed her in Washington, the minimum-wage hearing as well as a speech to the Consumer Federation of America.
"It's basically what I ran on," she says. "The economics of America's working families, and making the banking system work."
It's a modified Hillary Clinton strategy, says Jim Manley, senior director at Quinn Gillespie & Associates in Washington, and former Ted Kennedy press secretary. Warren can "pick and choose" when to speak, he says — for example, at the Banking Committee hearings. "Those are the issues she knows best."
"I think she has the confidence that comes from having been a leader on these kinds of consumer issues for years," says Minnesota Senator Al Franken — a progressive colleague on the HELP Committee who knows a thing or two about arriving in Washington as a celebrity senator. "She is principled and very brilliant on these issues. She's picking her spots, and she's certainly not shy about speaking her mind."
"Why wait," says Massachusetts Congresswoman Niki Tsongas. After Warren campaigned on her knowledge, credibility, and passion on the critical topic of inequities in the financial industry, "we'd be disappointed if she didn't do that."
"She's doing exactly what we expected her to do," says Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), whose nearly one million members were a huge fundraising source for Warren's campaign. "She is breathing new oxygen into the room around banking accountability."
Method behind it
Warren clearly relishes being a US Senator, and is getting early rave reviews. "She brings a new perspective to the Senate," says Thomas Quinn, partner at Venerable LLP, and a lobbyist on financial issues. "We have so many lifetime politicians. She brings a real detailed knowledge of the issues, especially with banking."
But it is probably not her dream job. That was the one she had briefly, running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) she helped create in 2010. A senator is just one of a hundred, in a slow-moving body where being right means very little.
She talks a lot about finding the "tools in the toolbox" available to her as senator: "In the first couple of months, it feels like I can see where it's possible to make a difference."
For an example of how this works, look at what happened earlier this month, after Warren broke out the "too big for trial" line.
PCCC quickly sent video from that hearing to its members; the clip shot around social media. An accompanying petition, calling for stronger prosecution of financial industry scofflaws, has gathered more than 50,000 signatures. That, and the accompanying media attention, brought a lot of pressure to bear on the regulatory agencies and prosecutors. Warren notes with pleasure an early-March American Banker magazine headline, warning that boards at financial institutions "must brace for tougher enforcement environment."
But in addition, that PCCC petition contained a check-off box, to be marked by those who have personally been helped by the CFPB. That question was included, according to Green, because Warren suggested in an earlier meeting that they begin preparing for the upcoming battle over Richard Cordray's re-nomination as the bureau's director. Republicans are explicitly trying to block Cordray because he is effective at running the bureau; they want to see it de-fanged, or at least run by someone uninterested in actually protecting consumers from abuses of financial corporations.
"We thought we'd find 10 people" through the check-off box, Green tells me. Instead, they have collected more than 1000 personal stories, which they are now prepared to use in the campaign to persuade senators to back Cordray.
Green calls this collaboration with Warren an "inside/outside" strategy of pressure and persuasion. Warren calls it "putting wind in our own sails."
"In this case, putting wind in sails for accountability by the big financial institutions," she says. "And that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. I believe it's what the American people want, and frankly it's what will make the banking system safer."
Not going rogue
That powerful following is not limited to PCCC-type lefties – plenty of other groups, including EMILY's List, have similar citizen armies devoted to Warren.
It won't be easy maintaining their allegiance, as she navigates the compromise-filled world of the Senate. As I sat in her lobby, aides handled an unending string of phone calls, many chastising her from the left. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't use profanity, sir," aide Tim Bialecki said to one caller complaining about Warren's vote in favor of confirming John Brennan to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Warren also needs to do business with colleagues who might not appreciate her rousing of the rabble.
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, who serves on the Banking Committee, says that despite Warren's sharp bite in those YouTubed public confrontations, she has taken a collegial approach with her colleagues that will serve her well. She has built upon her existing relationships, and forged new ones — even co-sponsoring a bill, introduced last week, with Republicans Bob Corker of Tennessee and David Vitter of Louisiana, and moderate Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, on housing-finance reform.
>> SIDEBAR: William "Mo" Cowan takes his turn <<
"She is one of the most knowledgeable people to enter the Senate in a long time," says Reed. "She is thoughtful, methodical, pleasant, and she wants to co-operate." Warren's sharp exchanges in hearings, he says, are "not just an exercise in rhetoric."
"Behind the scenes she is being herself," Franken says. "She has strong progressive views. But, in her interactions she's a lovely, nice person."
She also has the advantage of being able to work on a six-year time horizon — and, realistically, as long as she wants to stay there.
And that might be what scares her Wall Street enemies the most. There is no amount of money, or scurrilous attacks, likely to cause her downfall at the polls.
That will only make them more eager to find other ways to halt her efforts. They will counter-attack at every opportunity — as with the current attempt to derail Cordray's re-nomination — and undoubtedly plan longer-term strategies to limit her sway.
After all, they are supposed to be too big to fail, not her. It will take much longer than three months to see which of them will ultimately left standing.
>> DAVID@DAVIDSBERNSTEIN.COM :: @DBERNSTEIN
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/153162-mrs-warren-goes-to-washington/
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