She persists. Elizabeth Warren is a fighter and she won’t back down from a policy fight. And I like it!
Let me give you some quick context and then her comment yesterday.
Elizabeth Warren was a law school professor. Her expertise was bankruptcy. She went into her research expecting to find that most bankruptcies were caused by personal irresponsibility, for that was the common wisdom. What she found turned her from a moderate Republican to a progressive Democrat:
These economic straits, Warren argued, were not the fault of the people who were suffering, nor was it the moral failure of a growing share of spendthrifts. No—a deregulated credit industry preyed the most on the stressed and the strained. The game was rigged.
Starting in the late 1990s, Republicans and a few Democrats tried to make bankruptcy law more bank friendly. Joe Biden led that effort. In February 2005, Elizabeth Warren was an expert witness before a Senate Committee opposing the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill. She had been fighting that bill for 7 years. And she faced Senator Joe Biden:
On a February morning in 2005 in a hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Joe Biden confronted Elizabeth Warren over a subject they’d been feuding over for years: the country’s bankruptcy laws. Biden, then a senator from Delaware, was one of the strongest backers of a bill meant to address the skyrocketing rate at which Americans were filing for bankruptcy.
There’s bad blood between the two on this bill.
And Biden has attacked Warren. In a 2015 interview, Joe Biden accused Senator Warren of trying to punish the rich:
“It’s not about punishing the rich, which is the fundamental premise of Elizabeth — who’s smart as hell and a good person,” Biden said.
That’s bullshit, Joe. Republican framing. Warren wants a country that works for everyone, not just corporations and the very rich.
That bankruptcy bill got Warren into politics:
You can find more background facts in my post from last month: Elizabeth Warren v. the Banks -- The 2005 Bankruptcy Act (the block quotes above are from my post and linked there).
People like Teddy Kennedy voted against it in the Senate. In the House, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Raul Grijalva, Adam Schiff, Jay Inslee, and Nancy Pelosi are among those who voted NO. This was Biden’s Bill.
The 2005 Bankruptcy Bill passed, was signed into law by Bush, and harmed many working people. It still does. For example, while student loans were always difficult to discharge in bankruptcy, it now is virtually impossible.
This brings me up to yesterday, when Joe Biden announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for President. Warren is still fighting for working people, and she won’t back down.
Asked by a reporter on Thursday about a 2005 fight the two had over bankruptcy legislation, Warren was clear that she believed Biden took the side opposing American families.
"I got in that fight because [families] just didn't have anyone and Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies," Warren said after a rally in Iowa. "It's all a matter of public record."
Business Insider: The 2020 battle is on: Elizabeth Warren accuses Joe Biden of siding with credit card companies over struggling Americans
I think that Warren will kick Biden’s ass in the debates this summer, and not just over the bankruptcy bill. This is a deep policy difference and it matters.
