Wall Street scourge and Trump antagonist Elizabeth Warren is poised to play a higher-profile role in resisting Republican priorities in the face of a GOP trifecta in Washington — but her chances of success will hinge on her ability to mend fences within her own party.
The Massachusetts lawmaker is in line to become the top Democrat on the Republican-led Senate Banking Committee, giving her more power than ever on a panel where she has burnished her image as a progressive icon by berating bankers and bruising colleagues on both sides of the aisle. That history of internal conflict is fueling hope among the committee's conservatives that they can win bipartisan backing in fighting Warren on looming issues like cryptocurrency regulation and President-elect Donald Trump's economic nominees.
"I've worked well with Elizabeth Warren over the years; there have been areas where we clearly have disagreed as well," moderate Virginia Democrat Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. "And I'm sure some of those areas of disagreement are not going to disappear."
Warren, who was elected to the Senate in 2012, has had outsize sway over Democrats' economic agenda even without serving in a full committee leadership role. Her influence hit a high point in the Biden era, when many of her former aides and allies held key administration roles and her views were reflected on issues including consumer protections and student loan debt. But that sway hasn't always been strong enough to keep Democrats from helping to roll back bank regulations during Donald Trump's first term or backing crypto-friendly legislation this year.
"I've told all the folks on the Democrats' side who thank me for being bipartisan when I've took some tough votes, I said, 'I look forward to y'all demonstrating that you can be,'" Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview. "So I will be going back to some of them."
What Warren can accomplish on Senate Banking will be the highest-stakes test yet of her pull in Washington. The role will allow her to hire more staff, select committee witnesses and potentially have more bargaining power with lawmakers as she looks to push back on business-friendly nominees and legislation. She will need to find a way to fight those fights while working with Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Trump loyalist who will ascend to Senate Banking chair after serving as ranking member.
Warren is mapping out policies that she argues could be ripe for compromise with Republicans. That includes boosting the supply of affordable housing and clawing back compensation from executives at failed banks.
"There are two central issues on which the Democrats are united: affordability and accountability," Warren said in an interview, adding that she hoped to collaborate with Scott in those areas.
Vocal advocacy for tougher banking regulations after the 2008 Wall Street meltdown made Warren a household name — and a favorite punching bag of Republicans. Progressive supporters are hoping that she's able to do more of the same in her higher-profile role.
"What we're going to see from the Republicans is a tsunami of deregulation ... and she is going to put up a fight across the board," said Dennis Kelleher, a former Senate Democratic aide who now leads the financial watchdog group Better Markets.
As the panel's top Democrat while Republicans control the majority, Warren won't be driving the committee's hearings or legislation. But former aides say they still expect her to have significant sway.
“When I worked for her, we had no power,” said Groundwork Collaborative Executive Director Lindsay Owens, a former Warren adviser on economic policy. “And she still wielded enormous influence over economic conversations and economic policy in Washington, because of the way she used her megaphone."
Warren came to prominence in Washington as head of a congressionally-appointed committee that oversaw Treasury's bank bailout after the 2008 financial crisis and by standing up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she is credited with conceiving when she was still an academic.
“She has deep, substantive expertise in the policy areas under Banking Committee jurisdiction in a way that might be unmatched in the history of the committee," said Dan Geldon, Warren's former chief of staff.
K Street lobbyists fought fiercely to persuade Warner to take the Senate Banking job to keep it out of Warren's hands. Now they're bracing for her to do real damage to the firms they represent using messaging alone.
"Warren is smart and very comfortable in front of a camera and in print, and does not need subpoena authority to be effective," said Travis Norton, a financial services lobbyist who previously served as Scott's banking counsel.
Crypto lobbyists are questioning whether the industry's expensive super PAC push to unseat current Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) could have been a miscalculation.
“[Democrats] don’t have the votes, so it’s rhetorical posture — but rhetorical posture is what was killing us for years," said one crypto lobbyist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “We would have been better off with a Republican Senate and Sherrod in that seat and sufficiently shaken.”
Asked whether she would be open to advancing crypto legislation next year, Warren replied: "It depends on what it looks like." Warren has been one of her party's fiercest critics of the crypto industry, which she has warned poses threats to the financial system and is rife with crime.
"I haven't seen anyone on the Banking Committee advance the argument that crypto should be excepted from the rules to prevent drug traffickers and terrorists from using any part of our financial system," she said.
Jasper Goodman contributed to this report.
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