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Elizabeth Warren knocks it out of the park!!!


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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/elizabeth-warren-student-loans_n_5272505.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063


 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants the next debate in Congress on student loans to focus on helping borrowers refinance their debt.

 

The Massachusetts Democrat was to file a bill Tuesday that would open the door for potentially millions of recipients of federal loans to refinance at the same rate current recipients can get. Undergraduates, for example, qualify for loan at a 3.86 percentage rate.

 

The bill is part of a larger effort by Democrats to focus on college costs leading up to the November election. Reps. George Miller, D-Calif., and John Tierney, D-Mass., were to file a companion bill in the House.

 

Last year, Congress reached a bipartisan deal that ties federal student loan interest rates to financial markets for students who take out loans, starting last July.

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  • 4 weeks later...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/elizabeth-warrens-idea-of-a-non-partisan-bill-is-all-tax-and-spend/article/2549367?custom_click=rss
 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a funny idea about what constitutes a nonpartisan bill.

 

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and outspoken progressive, on Wednesday introduced a new version of her bill, the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act.

The bill would allow borrowers to refinance outstanding student loans at rates currently available to new borrowers (3.86 percent for undergraduates, 5.46 percent for graduate students and 6.41 percent for others).

 

Warren framed the issue as a no-brainer for members of both major parties.
 

"This is a step Republicans and Democrats can easily support right now," Warren said. Later, she said the bill should "not be a partisan issue."

Democrats and Republicans worked together in 2013 to lower the rates on Stafford and other federal student loans for new borrowers, but the Bank on Students Act is far from a win-win proposal.

 

While Warren touted a Congressional Budget Office report finding that her bill would "pay for itself," it does this by imposing a "Fair Share Tax" on upper-income earners -- a deficit-neutral option, just not one Republicans will tolerate. The CBO found that the bill would increase direct spending by about $51 billion from 2015-2024, and the tax would bring in $72 billion over the same period.

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http://washingtonexaminer.com/senate-fights-over-student-loan-rates-as-house-debates-veterans-affairs-fix/article/2549452
 

President Obama, meanwhile, is expected on Monday to endorse legislation authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that would allow college students and college graduates with existing loans to refinance with the government at a lower interest rate - ranging from 3.86 percent to 6.41 percent.

 

Democrats propose paying for the legislation by implementing the so-called Buffett Rule, which would require a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for people earning more than than $1 million annually.

 

“Student loan debt is a drag on this economy,” Warren said. “So this is truly an emergency circumstance. It is hurting people, household by household by household, family by family by family, and it is also hurting this economy.”

 

Senate Republicans are expected to oppose the legislation, however, because it calls for a tax increase and would also result in the the federal government taking on more student loan debt, since those with private loans would also be permitted to refinance with the government at the lower rates.

 

The House, meanwhile, will vote on reviving two tax cut measures that expired in 2013. One bill would allow small businesses to deduct some of the the cost of purchasing equipment and supplies while a second bill would make it easier for businesses to donate to charities.

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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/14/elizabeth-warren-bashes-wall-street-in-west-virginia/?hpt=hp_t2
 

Shepherdstown, West Virginia (CNN) – Elizabeth Warren doesn’t roll deep.

The Massachusetts senator and reigning champion of progressives everywhere arrived right on time Monday afternoon for a campaign event in West Virginia, this one for Democratic Senate hopeful Natalie Tennant, Warren’s latest stop in a national political tour boosting 2014 candidates. Her slight frame slid gingerly out of the passenger side of a blue SUV – her own car, with Bay State plates – and she greeted a volunteer with a golly-gee smile.

“Oh! Looks like it started to sprinkle out here!” Warren said, peeking up at the sky.

There was no entourage, no security detail. Just an aide left behind to park the car. Not knowing where to go, Warren wandered right into the side entrance of the Clarion Hotel in Shepherdstown and strode up to a police officer standing idly.

“Hi, I’m Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Well it’s nice to meet you!” the officer replied. Her aide arrived, conveniently in time to box out an advancing reporter, and escorted her down a hallway.

The low-key arrival was not, it turns out, an indicator of the reception she would receive inside.

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http://washingtonexaminer.com/elizabeth-warren-the-government-shutdown-was-over-birth-control/article/2550892
 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Tuesday blamed last October'sgovernment shutdown on Republicans wanting to deny women access to birth control.

No really. Warren said this on the Senate floor while defending the Democrats' deceptively titled “Women's Health Protection Act.”

“Remember last year's government shutdown that nearly tanked our economy?” Warren asked. “That fight started with a GOP effort to hold the whole operation of the federal government hostage in order to try to force Democrats and the president to let employers deny workers access to birth control.”

Um, no, sorry.

The government shutdown occurred over a continuing resolution to fund the government since no budget could be agreed upon. Republicans used the opportunity to try and defundObamacare.

Republicans were upset over the Obama administration's selective enforcement of certain provisions in Obamacare. The main problem the GOP had at the time was the announcement of a delay in the employer mandate.

Warren appears to be getting her claim from a 2011 Huffington Post article, which said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the House would not vote for any spending bill containing funding for Planned Parenthood.

But that was 2011, and the government shutdown was in 2013.

For that, we have to go to another Huffington Post article that said Republicans voted on a bill that would delay much of Obamacare for one year, including the so-called conscience clause that was at issue in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision.

Democrats want to claim that without Obamacare, women would not have access to birth control — as if they never had access prior to the law. But saying that specifically was the reason for the government shutdown is an extreme stretch.

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http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/05/news/economy/elizabeth-warren-market-broken/index.html?iid=Lead
 

Senator Elizabeth Warren says she picked up a lot of her feistiness from reading Nancy Drew novels as a kid. Today she believes the most important mystery to solve is how to get the American economy working for someone other than billionaires.

It's a message she's been taking all over the country, and she isn't afraid to call banks, credit card companies and some employers cheats and tricksters.

"The biggest financial institutions figured out they could make a lot of money by cheating people on mortgages, credit cards and payday loans," she told a packed auditorium at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she spoke alongside New York Times (NYT) columnist Paul Krugman.

The Democrat from Massachusetts even said the market is broken in many regards.

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Well, of course she did...

 

It was the republicans though.  They wanted to repeal the affordable care act and were willing to shut down the government to make their point.  The only real problem I have is the fact they don't own it.

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While the actual statement may be a stretch, i believe she's trying to make the very real point that pandering the extreme right is not only slowing progress, but legitimately hurting the country in measurable quantifiable ways. 

 

Maybe, but in some ways I think the schism in the Republican party is healthy.  Anything that marginalizes religious wackos & the militia/Obammer's-gunna-tek-muh-guns crowd is good IMHO.  That pandering has backfired & hopefully could eventually end the 2-party sockpuppet theater that's helped turn this country into a plutocracy.

 

It's exposed a really shitty segment of our population that we've generally been all too happy to pretend doesn't exist.  In the short term, groups like the Tea Party are just a tool of those same plutocrats, but that exposure isn't good for their interests in the long run.

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http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/28/news/economy/elizabeth-warren-fed-tapes/index.html?iid=HP_LN
 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants Congress to look into allegations the New York Federal Reserve blocked one of its own from criticizing Goldman Sachs.

The allegations were made Friday and are based on what appear to be secretly-made recordings of meetings between a Fed investigator and her colleagues. The investigator, Carmen Segarra, was fired but in 2011 and 2012 was assigned to monitor Goldman. Two news outlets that received the tapes, This American Life and ProPublica, reported they showed Fed officials pushing back on her efforts.

Warren said the tapes raise "disturbing issues" and that hearings are necessary "because it's our job to make sure our financial regulators are doing their jobs."

The tapes are also part of Segarra's lawsuit against the Fed for wrongfully firing her after just seven months.

The New York Fed said Friday it "categorically rejects the allegations being made about the integrity of its supervision of financial institutions." It added her dismissal was based "entirely on performance grounds" and that her concerns "were taken seriously and escalated by senior members of the team."

Goldman pushed back on her view that it did not have a proper conflict of interest policy. It also said she had previously applied for jobs at Goldman but been turned down.

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I am reading her book. It's really good. Just a down home tale of a former housewife trying to make ends meet for her family, gets divorced, meets a fellow lawyer interested in teaching law, keeps wondering why people go bankrupt and whom in the hell they are, realizes it's US, runs for Senate and gets elected. It's actually a great American story, and make no mistake, she's fighting for our rights. Fuck her political affiliation. I hope she becomes President.

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I am reading her book. It's really good. Just a down home tale of a former housewife trying to make ends meet for her family, gets divorced, meets a fellow lawyer interested in teaching law, keeps wondering why people go bankrupt and whom in the hell they are, realizes it's US, runs for Senate and gets elected. It's actually a great American story, and make no mistake, she's fighting for our rights. Fuck her political affiliation. I hope she becomes President.

 

 

I may not agree with her re: Isreal, but as far as finance there isnt a person I want more to be President.

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/elizabeth-warren-obama-sided-wall-street-over-people-losing-their-homes

Salon’s Thomas Frank, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren lashed out at President Barack Obama and his administration for repeatedly protecting Wall Street’s interests over those of the American people.

 

She began, however, on a somewhat conciliatory note, saying that “Democrats have not done all that they should, but at least we’re out there fighting for the right things,” whereas “Mitch McConnell has announced that if he gets the majority in the Senate, his first objective is to repeal healthcare and his second is to roll back the financial reforms, and in particular to target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the one agency that’s out there for American families, the one that has returned more than four billion dollars to families who got cheated by big financial institutions.”

 

“When I think about the president, for me, it’s about both halves,” Warren continued. “If Barack Obama had not been president of the United States we would not have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Period. I’m completely convinced of that.”

 

And yet, she added, “[a]t the same time, he picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street.”“[H]e was the one who refused to throw the agency under the bus and made sure that his team kept the agency alive and on the table. Now there was a lot of other stuff that also had to happen for it to happen. But if he hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have gotten the agency.”

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http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/politics/warren-treated-differently/
 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren told CNN she has been treated differently as a woman in the clubby upper chamber — echoing the general sentiments of her colleague Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who wrote about sexism in the Senate in a recent book.

During a wide-ranging interview on the Colorado campaign trail—where she was stumping for endangered incumbent Sen. Mark Udall—CNN asked Warren whether she had experienced any different treatment as a woman. "Yes," she said. Would she elaborate? "Nope." But was it surprising? "Not really, I wish it were," she told CNN. "But it's hard to change these big, male dominated institutions. What I am very happy about is that there are now enough women in the United States Senate to bring change to that place and I think that's just powerfully important." There are now 20 women in the senate.

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http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/elizabeth-warren-tells-showbiz-crowd-the-game-is-rigged-in-congress-1201352209/
 

As speculation continues to swirl over whether she would run for president in 2016, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) solidified her standing as a favorite of Hollywood and Los Angeles progressives on Sunday when she delivered a speech hammering Washington for being beholden to corporate interests and the rich and powerful.

While some of the guests at the ACLU of Southern California’s Bill of Rights Dinner expressed frustration and dismay over the campaigns of Democrats, Warren directed her remarks at the system on Capitol Hill.

 

“We face a basic question in this country: Who does this government work for?” she asked in a 12-minute speech at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. “Is government there only to advance the interests of the rich and powerful? Does government exercise its power only for those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Is there only to strengthen the strong and enrich the wealthy? Or does government work for all of us? Is government working to build opportunities, not only for some of our kids, but for all of our kids.

“We have to face it: The game is rigged in Congress.”

 

Industry donors already are laying the groundwork for a potential bid by Hillary Clinton, via the current activities of the Ready for Hillary SuperPAC and plans by Jeffrey Katzenberg to raise for Priorities USA Action. But some Hollywood progressives are privately or even publicly hoping that Warren runs. When asked about whether she would get in the race, Warren recently told People magazine, “I don’t think so.” But she seemed to leave the door open for the possibility.

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