NEW: Warren Says Brown Part of ‘Guerilla War’ on Financial Reform

Monday, June 04, 2012

GoLocalWorcester News Team

Elizabeth Warren has a new weapon in her arsenal against U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the man she hopes to unseat in November. The consumer advocate ripped into the incumbent Massachusetts lawmaker in the wake of a report that claims he worked to weaken the landmark financial reform bill he supported.

"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,” Warren said in a prepared statement. “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.”

Warren’s fiery comments came on the heels of a Boston Globe report that Brown has worked to shield banks from the Wall Street overhaul implemented after the financial meltdown that devastated the U.S. economy. Brown has touted his vote in favor of the bill, but the Globe article, citing e-mails it obtained, said Brown has done everything he can since voting for the bill to undermine it.

Specifically, according to the Globe, Brown staffers were in repeated contact with the Department of Treasury and that that Brown’s legislative director urged the department to weaken the so-called Dodd-Frank financial reform – and particularly the Volcker Rule. The Volcker Rule was recently in the news following a loss of $3 billion or more posted by traders at J.P. Morgan. It deepened concern that the Volcker Rule is too weak to rein in the biggest Wall Street banks. 

“First he used his vote to water down the rules and save big banks $19 billion,” said Warren. “Then, after the bill passed, Scott Brown went behind the scenes to shield the banks from the provisions of this critical law. Now, he’s boasting in his television ad about getting the bill passed. The facts and the record are clear. He is on the side of Wall Street and the big banks, not the middle class families of Massachusetts.”

Senator Scott Brown's spokesman Felix Browne said, "Given her proven record of distorting the facts and making things up to serve her purposes, it’s not surprising that Elizabeth Warren is now misrepresenting Scott Brown’s key role as the tie-breaking vote in passing Wall Street reform, a bill she called the ‘strongest set of reforms in three generations.’ As he has always done, Senator Brown worked on a bipartisan basis to protect jobs at home, including well-known Massachusetts companies like Mass Mutual and State Street that had nothing to do with the financial crisis."