Minnesota

Eric J in MN

(35,619 posts) Wed Nov 11, 2015, 02:19 AM Nov 2015

Group chaired by Norm Coleman attacks the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Liberal fans haven't been able to persuade Sen. Elizabeth Warren to make a run for president, but she'll appear at Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate on Fox Business Network—during a commercial break. As Politico's Burgess Everett reports, the conservative American Action Network will run an ad opposing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog agency that Warren created following the financial crash. Per Everett, the group is spending half a million dollars to run the ad during the debate and later this week.

The commercial paints the CFPB as a Kremlin-like bureaucratic nightmare, with Warren as the Stalinesque figure barring regular Americans from collecting loans. Warren's face is plastered on a giant red banner in the background, alongside that of CFPB director Richard Cordray. The Soviet imagery is not subtle.

"They call it CFPB," the ad's narrator ominously intones. "Washington’s latest regulatory agency, designed to interfere with your personal financial decisions: that car loan you needed, your mortgage, that personal loan. With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, those who need help the most are denied."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/11/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-gop-debate-ad

The American Action Network is chaired by former US Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN).

Elizabeth Warren email response:

I’m not surprised that the big banks and Republicans are attacking me or the CFPB. After all, in just four years, the brand-new consumer agency has already forced the biggest financial companies to return more than $11 billion directly to the people they cheated. And even on Wall Street, $11 billion is real money.

But I am surprised by just how bold and shameless these new attacks are.

Wall Street has a problem: they know that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is working and that it’s incredibly popular with the families it helps. So the big banks are smart: $30,000 for a TV ad is nothing compared to the money they can save if their Republican buddies will go after the agency. And if they can soften up support for the CFPB, the Republicans will feel a little bit safer when they try to undercut the agency and rollback financial oversight during closed-door deals.

I’m a big girl, and I can take the personal attacks. But working families who need the CFPB can’t – not when they’ve been crushed, squeezed and hammered by the big banks and their friends in Washington for years. It’s up to us to fight back.