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Warren won’t say if she would singlehandedly block ‘cromnibus’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) refused to say whether she would singlehandedly hold up a government funding bill over included changes to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

The House is set to vote on funding legislation Thursday that would keep most of the government operating through September. But Democrats threw their support into doubt Wednesday, when they cried foul over several policy riders, including one that would roll back part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

{mosads}Warren, a noted big bank critic, was quick to decry that provision, and called on House Democrats to oppose the funding bill until that measure was removed.

With the government set to shut down at the end of Thursday without a funding measure, any senator could push the government over that deadline by agreeing to hold up the funding bill after the House passed it.

But Warren refused to take that bait with reporters Wednesday when asked if she would make that move.

“We’re trying to get it out of the House omnibus bill right now. That is where all the pressure is,” she told reporters when asked Wednesday.

While many Democrats, including top leaders in the House, have been hotly critical of the Dodd-Frank provision, as well as one easing campaign finance restrictions, included in the omnibus, it remains to be seen how much opposition to the overall spending bill exists within the party.

House Republicans will need to count on some share of Democratic votes to pass the critical legislation, as a conservative bloc of lawmakers will vote against the measure for not directly challenging President Obama’s executive action on immigration.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said there were “scores” of House Democrats concerned about the Dodd-Frank language, which partially reverses a ban on banks trading in financial derivatives. The top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee said she was opposed to the overall spending bill due to the financial reform law alterations.

“We’re not going to support the omnibus bill [and] we’re going to spend every waking hour trying to pull this out,” she said.

She noted that House Democrats enjoy “leverage” in the last-minute push to pass the bill since the GOP will need some of her party to get it done.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier in the day that her party was “deeply troubled” by the policy riders in the funding bill, but stopped short of saying Democrats would oppose it.

Seventy Democrats voted in favor of the Dodd-Frank change when it was considered as stand-alone legislation in 2013. The bill was not taken up by the Senate, and the White House criticized the bill but stopped short of threatening to veto it.

Tags Cromnibus Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren

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