Calling it "an important step forward," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) commended her Senate colleagues on Sunday for their recent bipartisan vote to end government subsidies for "too big to fail" banks.
"I'm glad that Republicans and Democrats can agree: 'Too big to fail' needs to end, and these big-bank subsidies make no sense," Warren told The Republican.
Late Friday night, the Senate voted 99-0 in favor of a non-binding budget amendment, introduced by Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), to eliminate subsidies or funding advantages for Wall Street banks with more than $500 billion in assets.
Warren said the vote was a promising sign that the Senate was "making progress," but said there was more to do.
"We know we can take on the big banks and their army of lobbyists and win, because we've done it before," the Senate newcomer told The Republican. "When banks are too big to fail, too big to jail, too big for trial, too big to manage, too big to regulate, too big to shrink, and too big to reform ... they are just too big."
HuffPost's Mark Gongloff explains why the Senate vote against "too big to fail" still leaves bank reformers wanting:
Unfortunately, the vote was nothing more than theater without any real world implications: The subsidy measure was non-binding, and it was attached as an amendment to the Democrats' 2014 budget proposal, which everybody knows is going nowhere.
Still, it is impressive that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have found common ground on this issue. The subsidy amendment was proposed by the seemingly unlikely duo of Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and David Vitter (R-La.), and it follows the recent harmonic convergence of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (a Republican) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the topic of whether Too Big To Fail is still a massive problem.
Warren and Bernanke appeared to clash on the issue of "too big to fail" in February, but last week the Fed chairman stated directly that the Massachusetts Democrat was right to be concerned about the potential danger posed by the banks.
"I agree with Elizabeth Warren 100 percent that it’s a real problem," he said.
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