MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Interview
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HAYES: And Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee joins me now. I got to say, I have watched a lot of absurd stuff uh on Capitol Hill. That was one of the most cringe-inducing and embarrassing performances I`ve seen in a long time. Am I wrong? I mean, did you feel that way?
WARREN: Oh, you know, to be in the room with it was just unbelievable. But here`s the thing. It is so cynical. If Professor Omarova had actually been somebody who had been out there saying and writing, ma`am, we need to help the big financial institutions and whatever JP Morgan chase wants is what I`m for and we should deregulate, we should just let them run the entire country. You realize that those same republicans would be hailing her as someone who grew up under this oppressive regime and then overcame it --
HAYES: Exactly.
[20:55:01]
WARREN: -- and came to America and fulfilled her dream, her dream to help giant financial institutions. But since that`s not what she wants to do, since she has actually got a pretty good record of having written about the abuses in the financial system, talking about the crash in 2008 and how it was brought on by loading up on risks and regulators who were feckless, as a result these giant banks are like, we don`t want that woman. We have -- no, no, no.
And so, they look for a way to push back against her. You can`t do it on the merits. So, they go after for having been born under the Soviet Union`s regime. She was born in Kazakhstan. She loses half her family to the Stalinists. They -- literally, her family -- much of her family was murdered by them.
She wants to come to the United States. She comes to the United States. She studies at American college. While she is here, the Soviet Union collapses. And she gets to stay and build a life here. She is a well-respected academic. Not someone who sought the limelight, she has just worked through how she believes banking regulation should be run for the American people, not for the big banks, and that`s how she ends up in this crazy Joe McCarthy meets Trumpism on the -- in the Senate banking hearing.
HAYES: And as you know it, I mean, this is -- to your point here, I mean, this is -- this is cover essentially for interest that don`t want to be regulated. Rebecca Traister wrote a great profile of Omarova that was in New York Magazine and made this point, which I think, again, these are obscure positions I think for most people that don`t deal with this universe, OCC, office Comptroller of Concurrency.
But Traister noting this. In the early aughts, OCC became notorious for making itself so attractive to big banks as a regulator whose looser rules would supersede stricter state regulations, that banks like JP Morgan would use to be chartered by New York eagerly took federal charters over state ones.
So, because there`s this -- all these different entities that regulate banks, there can be a kind of like race to the bottom effect that`s happened.
WARREN: Oh, yes, totally.
HAYES: This is a really important -- I mean, the OCC regulates banks and she would be the head of that regulation, is that how this would work?
WARREN: That`s the basic deal here. And understand, we have had recent OCC, it`s called the Comptroller of the Currency.
HAYES: Yes.
WARREN: We`ve had recent people in this position who refer to the banks, these giant banks, as the customers of the OCC and how urging the staff to be better on customer service. Excuse me. They are supposed to be the government that is supposed to regulate these big financial institutions to make sure that they follow the law and don`t cheat their customers, Wells Fargo, for example. And also to make sure that they don`t load up on risk and crash our whole economy again. That`s the function of the OCC.
And that`s the role that she will take, watching out for American consumers, making sure that we get some real competition in the banking industry, and making sure that these guys follow the law. And for that, they have attacked her viciously, mercilessly, and personally, and stupidly.
HAYES: She is a really impressive person. I should note, on my podcast Why Is This Happening? I actually interviewed her for an hour about some of her ideas which have to do with how to think about the Federal Reserve and its role in investment in in the political economy.
She`s a really interesting thinker. She`s not like at all a polemicist in any way. She`s not like out there. She worked in George W. Bush`s Treasury Department. So, people should check that out if they want to -- final question for you because I have you right now. The House is debating that Build Back Better Bill.
The last time I had you on, it was sort of when this framework was developed. You seem very optimistic. It looks like this is going to pass the House tonight. How are you feeling about it now?
WARREN: I`m feeling good. I think it`s going to pass the House tonight. It`s going to go through what we call a scrub after that. And the parliamentarian in the Senate has to run through all the details to make sure it`s right. But I would say right after Thanksgiving, we`re going to have this in the Senate. I`m hopeful we`re going to get this done.
Universal child care, universal pre-k, we`re going to be able to lower the cost of insulin for everybody in the country who takes insulin. Instead of hundreds of dollars a month, we`re going to bring it down to -- measured in the 20s or $30.00 that people pay. It`s going to make a real difference.
And we`re going to get my minimum tax through, the one i have with Senator King. And we`re going to get it through the one that says giant corporations, Amazon pay nothing in taxes even when they`re reporting billions in profits. 15 percent minimum taxes --
HAYES: 15 percent --
WARREN: It`s going to raise $300 billion.
HAYES: That is in the BBB being voted on tonight. Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you very much.
WARREN: Thank you.
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