Sen. Warren Warns That Spending Bill Sets Dangerous Precedent

Steve Inskeep December 15, 2014

The government opens this week after a dramatic weekend. The Senate approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill despite protests from the left and the right. The bill had already been passed by the House.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fought against changes to banking regulations — she's among this moment's most prominent Democrats.

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STEVE INSKEEP: You said they slipped it in, which is true — it did get tacked on to this much larger legislation about something else. But isn't this a provision that did go through the regular legislative process in the House of Representatives? There were committee hearings. There were Democrats as well as Republicans who voted for it.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: You know, it was literally never introduced in the Senate. It had no hearings. There was no discussion about this. And let's keep in mind about this provision, this is a provision that Citigroup lobbyists literally wrote. And then, just to make sure that everybody got the point, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, personally made phone calls to House members to push for this change. I think that tells you what was really going on here. They want to be able to juice their profits. A half-dozen of the largest financial institutions in this country want to be able to take riskier bets, and, hey, if it doesn't work out, they want the U.S. taxpayer to bail 'em out. I think that's a bad idea.

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