Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is not playing favorites in the 2016 race on her pet issue, cracking down on Wall Street.
The outspoken bank critic gave kudos to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Wednesday, one day after the liberal candidate detailed his plan to rein in big banks if elected president.
{mosads}“I’m glad Bernie Sanders is out there fighting to hold the big banks accountable, to make our economy safer, and to stop the Republicans from rigging the system even more in Wall Street’s favor,” Warren said on her Facebook page.
Her comment came roughly one month after she had similar kind words for Hillary Clinton, after the Democratic front-runner vowed to fight GOP efforts to roll back new financial rules.
Warren’s status as a liberal icon has made her a significant presence in Democratic jockeying for the White House, and an endorsement of either candidate from her could be a significant boon to his or her campaign.
But after repeatedly refusing outside efforts to draft her into the presidential race, Warren has yet to indicate which candidate she might ultimately back or when she would make such a decision.
In her latest comments, Warren instead focused her criticism on Republicans, many of whom have vowed to undo Dodd-Frank reforms if elected president.
She had a long history of criticizing the financial sector before joining the Senate in 2013, first as an academic and then as the architect behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new federal agency created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
On financial regulation, Warren’s policies are much closer to Sanders than Clinton. Both Sanders and Warren are pushing for a return of the Glass-Steagall Act, a now-repealed law that created a firewall between traditional and investment banking. And both Sanders and Warren have called for the government to step in and break up the nation’s biggest banks, calling them large enough to pose a threat to the entire financial system.
Clinton, who has taken heat from the left for her Wall Street ties, has opted for a more nuanced approach. Her financial plan is aimed primarily at protecting regulations already in place, strengethening rules on some lightly regulated sectors and drafting tough regulators to enforce them.
She has explicitly ruled out a return of Glass-Steagall, which was repealed when her husband was in office, saying it would not have prevented the last crisis.