Connect with us

TAKE A STAND!

Urge President Obama to appoint Warren to advocate for consumers

The following Call to Action was posted Thursday at AFL-CIO Now.


There are 44 members of the U.S. Senate who don’t want consumer and working family advocate Elizabeth Warren to run the new federal agency designed to protect consumers and working families from the kind of Wall Street and Big Bank abuses last year’s landmark Wall Street reform legislation outlawed.

Want to guess who they are? The entire Wall Street-friendly Republican Senate delegation. President Obama has picked Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). But the Wall Street water-carrier caucus has vowed to block Warren’s nomination. It just takes 41 votes to keep a filibuster alive.

They’ve said they would allow a vote on Warren only if CFPB’s authority is weakened and they are allowed the right to defund the now independently funded agency. In effect, making Wall Street happy and shutting down the CFPB.

TAKE ACTION! President Obama can win this fight for working families if he uses a recess appointment to put Warren in the director’s office at CFPB. Click here to send a message to Obama urging him to use a recess appointment for Warren when the Senate is out of session. The CFPB is scheduled to open its doors July 12. So please act now!

Why does Wall Street hate Warren?  Maybe because she wants to lift the curtain that keeps so many consumers in the dark on their financial products, from mortgages to credit cards. Writes James Surowiecki in the June 13 New Yorker:

The core principle of Warren’s work is also a cornerstone of economic theory: well-informed consumers make for vigorous competition and efficient markets. That idea is embodied in the design of the new agency, which focuses on improving the information that consumers get from banks and other financial institutions, so that they can do the kind of comparison shopping that makes the markets for other consumer products work so well.

Informed consumers, what a radical idea.

Click here to urge Obama to use a recess appointment for Warren.

CHECK OUT THE UNION DIFFERENCE in Washington: higher wages, affordable health and dental care, job and retirement security.

FIND OUT HOW TO JOIN TOGETHER with your co-workers to negotiate for better wages, benefits, and a voice at work. Or go ahead and contact a union organizer today!