Elizabeth Warren: The Corporate-Welfare Queen

[_bcspace]

Here’s how the New York Times relates the cromnibus skirmish to bailout politics: “The liberal base of the Democratic Party, led by Ms. Warren, also found itself in an unlikely alliance with the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Both opposed the Wall Street bailout of 2008 and feared that the spending measure would not only provide a bounty for big banks but would also help cause another economic crisis.”

Both opposed the Wall Street bailout of 2008?

One wonders which of these famous progressives the New York Times has in mind when it states — as uncontested fact — that “the liberal base of the Democratic party” “opposed the Wall Street bailout of 2008.” Elizabeth Warren did not oppose the bailout per se, though she was critical of the way the Treasury Department implemented it. The bailouts were enabled by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which enjoyed the support and votes of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senator Charles Schumer of New York, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Representative Jesse Jackson of Illinois, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, etc. The people who actually opposed bailouts by voting against bailouts were not in the main progressives, but were disproportionately conservative Republicans: Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Representative Michael Burgess of Texas, Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, etc.

The Left, predictably, is captive to the hipster impulse: “I opposed bailouts before it was cool” is the Democrats’ version of “I saw Hüsker Dü at Jay’s Longhorn Bar.” Show me the ticket stubs.

The Tea Party came into being as a reaction to Republican complicity in bailouts of all sorts: of Wall Street firms, and of irresponsible mortgage borrowers. Occupy, and the potty-trained version of that movement led by Elizabeth Warren, demands more bailouts: of people who borrowed money for college or to buy a home, of fashionable corporations that do not want to pay market rates for financing, etc. Senator Warren is an energetic proponent of corporate welfare for Boeing, General Electric Bechtel, Caterpillar, and other such poor, defenseless little mom-and-pop operations.

If you are looking for actual rather than theoretical opposition to bailouts and corporate welfare, then your choices include Senator Rand Paul and Senator Ted Cruz, but practically nobody who might be called a progressive.

Nobody ever says he’s in favor of more bailouts or more handouts to business interests, but every time you hear a politician trotting out federal loan guarantees for certain businesses or targeted tax breaks for others, that is what he is talking about. Senator Warren may dismiss the revision to Dodd-Frank as a sop to big business, but she does not oppose sops to big business —she only opposes the ones not originating on her side of the aisle.

[url=http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394635/its-still-tarp-kevin-d-williamson/page/0/1] It’s (Still) a TARP!
Elizabeth Warren, corporate-welfare queen[/url]

[_ajax18]

I hope Some Schmo read this article.

[_Kevin Graham]

What an epic moron this guy is. Instead of quoting Warren, he picks a straw man by quoting something from the New York Times. And he is so stupid he think's he can show that Warren is lying when she says she opposes bailouts for big banks ... because? Oh, yeah, because other Democrats supported it! Not Warren, but other Democrats!

Has he not paid any attention to the fact that Warren isn't a typical Democrat? She is attacking Obama like crazy right now, and rightly so. This is why Republicans are desperate to discredit her in any way they can. She is bound to garner support from moderates (and probably some Racist Republicans who like the fact that she's blonde/blue.. lol).

This author also misses the entire point that we were on the verge of financial collapse because of the risks taken by "too big to fail" entities, requiring the government to bail them out, and it was a Kansas Republican who slipped in a provision at the tail end of the bill that nuked the primary measure passed four years ago that would have prevented that from happening again. Why? Because Banks want to be able to take risks again without any repercussions. As it is now, we're back on the same path we were before when Bush was President, and if banks screw up again, the taxpayer is obligated to bail them out... AGAIN. This is what had Warren frothing at the mouth, and rightly so. The most concerning thing about all this is that she was basically the only one who was.

This idiot writing for a Right Wing outlet probably thinks he's entertaining anyone other than his base, when he tries to drag Warren through the mud because she DOESN'T get campaign contributions from the banks! Well no crap. But if she were for sale like Brown and Romney, she would be getting campaign contributions from them. Do you really think they haven't lobbied her at all? She isn't on their payroll like so many others; mostly Republican puppets who let these executives write up legislation for them pass. And you're going to pretend this is going to be bad for her come election time?

Warren should be gaining support from Republicans if they ever had any intention of standing behind their own rhetoric, but when all is said and done, they're just hypocrites, empty windbags and string puppets for the highest bidder in corporate America, and their ignorant defenders on the web have the audacity to claim they actually give a flying damn about economic stability and rising deficits.

Oh, and he also thinks he's going to get people to hate Warren because she supports providing what he calls "bailouts" for the American taxpayers who continuously get screwed! You know, like people who have to pay higher interest rates on student loans (funded by their taxes), meanwhile corporations get money literally for free (also funded by our taxes).

LOL.

Yes, go with that.

I beg you.

I'm sure that's bound to resonate with Americans outside your rather primary constituents; the wealthy, aging, caucasian base.

Just be glad she isn't running for President, because she would literally destroy Jeb or Mitt or anyone else you have crawling out of the banking industry's arsehole.

[_Brackite]

I'm sure that's bound to resonate with Americans outside your rather primary constituents; the wealthy, aging, caucasian base.

Just be glad she isn't running for President, because she would literally destroy Jeb or Mitt or anyone else you have crawling out of the banking industry's arsehole.

I doubt that Elizabeth Warren could defeat Jeb Bush in the 2016 Presidential election. Mitt Romney maybe, but not Jeb Bush.
Republicans should be hoping that Elizabeth Warren runs for President, because if she doesn't, then Hillary Clinton will likely become the 2016 Democratic Nominee for President. And if HC becomes the 2016 Democratic Nominee for President, then she will have at least a 70% chance of defeating whoever becomes the 2016 GOP Nominee for President.

[_Kevin Graham]

Typical. Republicans underestimate the super star political power of someone who has integrity. They were saying the same thing about Obama in 2008.

[_EAllusion]

The exact same rhetorical trick could be played on the Republican side since there was both opposition and support to the bailouts among their leadership as well. It's like the author's mind is so addled with partisanship that he can't imagine inter-party disagreements. The bailouts were a classic example of the progressive left and libertarian right aligning against he mainstream views of both parties. Both are absolutely irate with the government privatizing profits while socializing losses. The Republicans were able to mount more opposition than Democrats, but the major leaders of both parties pushed it through. The main confusion of this piece is thinking that the Democrat leadership of the time were hardcore progressives when they are not. Democrat progressives are people like Bernie Sanders, not Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton.

The Tea Party was originally an attempt to astroturf the nascent movement of Ron Paul revolution type Republicans fed up with the profligate spending of the Bush years and other issues of importance to them. The idea was to prevent a libertarianish 3rd party movement from developing and splitting the Republican base. It quickly evolved into something else as it drew in more and more radicalized religious right types, but that was its initial development.

There is a difference between progressive approaches and libertarians. Libertarians wanted to disentangle the government economic interference leading to things like the underwriting of risk that played a factor in the financial collapse. Progressives wanted to gear economic relief away from the finance industry to average citizens harmed by the collapse. That doesn't make either disingenuous. It means they have different policy aims. Warren is very much in favor of a type of corporate welfare; which is true, but her positions or those that she represents aren't exactly a secret. Her "welfare" ideas are devil's bargain proposals where federal money comes attached with heavy regulation.

[_Kevin Graham]

Examples of Warren backed corporate welfare at the expense of the American taxpayers would be ..?

[_EAllusion]

Examples of Warren backed corporate welfare at the expense of the American taxpayers would be ..?

Export-Import Bank for a cut and dry example. She also favors all manner of "government stimulus" plans for economic development that benefit those businesses of the receiving end of the monies.

[_Kevin Graham]

I was hoping you'd come up with something better than the Ex-Im Bank. That seems to be the only issue the libertarians on the web have with her. However, this isn't a private bank, it is a government bank. So what if it lends to private entities at a discount? I suppose you could call that a subsidy, but as long as it is bringing in profits to the treasury, I fail to see how any of this is costing the taxpayer. Last year alone those "subsides" provided a net gain of over $1 billion for the taxpayers.

I just don't see how this is near comparable to legislators who are in the pocket of Citigroup and other Financial institutions that essentially write up legislation for them to pass.

The recent omnibus bill also inserted a provision that increased the limit of campaign donations tenfold. So you have the services rendered and the payment for services inserted in the dead of night, right there in black and white, at the tail end of a 1,600 page bill. I don't think that's a coincidence.

[_EAllusion]

Artificially cheap loans (and selective tax breaks) are the primary way corporate welfare operates. That's what TARP essentially was. Do you not understand what corporate welfare is? The government rarely goes out and just hands businesses bags of cash. Corporate welfare works through subsidization of businesses and selective offering of contracts.