Politics

Warren Has Irked Obama Before, but Trade Deepens Their Rift

Published

9 years ago

May 15, 2015

In this Feb. 23, 2015, file photo, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. applauds as President Barack Obama makes the thumbs up sign as he arrives to speak at AARP in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Jim Kuhnhenn, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Barack Obama huffed that Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and established liberal star, was a “politician like everybody else” he revealed a rift that predates the current hostilities between the two Democrats over trade.

Though occasional allies, Warren has been aggravating the Obama administration since her pre-Senate days when she chaired an oversight panel charged with being a watchdog over the massive federal bank bailout.

But the dispute over Obama’s efforts to get trade negotiating authority from Congress and complete a 12-nation Pacific rim trade deal goes to the heart of a fundamental divide within the Democratic Party. It also has turned the tables in Congress where Democrats once delighted in watching Republicans struggle with their conservative tea party faction.

Now it’s Republicans who are amused and making the most of a Democratic split.

“You’ve got the energy of the Elizabeth Warren faction kind of driving the agenda” for Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday on CNBC. “I want to compliment the president — the way he took on the base, he took on Elizabeth Warren, he took on the labor unions.”

Obama’s request for negotiating authority was back on track Thursday after an embarrassing procedural loss Tuesday when only one Democrat voted with the president on a motion to begin debate on trade, even though about a dozen support his overall goal.

Democrats have long been suspicious of trade deals, blaming them for job losses and lax enforcement. Warren and her allies have dug further, building on those concerns to make a case that Obama is negotiating an agreement that is secret from the public, places U.S. sovereignty at risk and could roll back U.S. financial regulations.

“She’s absolutely wrong,” Obama said in an interview with Yahoo! that aired over the weekend. “Elizabeth is a politician like everybody else and she has a voice that she wants to get out there.”

That remark prompted Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who has been among Warren’s top allies on the trade issue, to rebuke the president for being “disrespectful.”

“I think that the president has made this more personal than he needed to,” Brown said.

Obama on Thursday sought to defuse the tension between the two, noting that his domestic agenda is virtually the same as hers and that of other liberals, except for trade.

“The issue with respect to myself and Elizabeth has never been personal,” he said during a news conference at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. “There are a whole bunch of some of my best friends in the Senate as well as in the House, some of my earliest supporters, who disagree with me on this.”

While the Obama-Warren spat highlights the deep Democratic split over trade, the party has healed in the past after major trade fights. Mitch Stewart, a former senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaigns and now a consultant for a pro-trade advocacy group, predicted the Obama-Warren relationship can survive the disagreement.

This dispute, however, comes at an awkward time for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as Obama’s secretary of State once called the Trans-Pacific negotiations the “gold standard” for fair trade. Now, as a presidential candidate who feels the pressure of Warren’s national prominence, she is sounding more skeptical and her lack of endorsement has been conspicuous.

A former Harvard professor, Warren burst onto the Washington scene after the 2008 financial crisis as a vigorous advocate for consumer financial protections. She became the chair of a bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel that kept tabs on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the taxpayer-financed fund that helped financial institutions out of the crisis.

Then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner bristled at her critiques, calling them “mostly unjustified.”

“Her TARP oversight hearings often felt more like made-for-YouTube inquisitions than serious inquiries,” Geithner wrote in his book “Stress Test.” ”She was worried about the right things, but she was better at impugning our choices — as well as our integrity and our competence — than identifying any feasible alternatives.”

More recently, Warren infuriated the White House by objecting to Obama’s nomination last year of Antonio Weiss, a Lazard investment banker, to be the third-ranking official at Treasury. Warren argued he was too close to Wall Street to hold a high post at Treasury. Weiss dropped out of contention for the post and Obama appointed him to serve as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a post that does not require Senate confirmation.

The arrangement was not unfamiliar to Warren. She herself did not have Senate votes in 2010 to be confirmed as head of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, so Obama appointed her a special presidential adviser to work with Geithner at Treasury on an interim basis.

A year later, with the help of then-Obama senior adviser Pete Rouse, Warren embarked on her 2012 Senate race. Obama campaigned for her.

___

Associated Press writers Charles Babington and Erica Werner contributed to this report.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

Published

5 days ago

April 20, 2024

Oakland Post

Mayor London Breed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org

***PRESS RELEASE***

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

HUD’s Continuum of Care grant will support the City’s range of critical services and programs, including permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and improved access to housing for survivors of domestic violence

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program is designed to support local programs with the goal of ending homelessness for individuals, families, and Transitional Age Youth.

This funding supports the city’s ongoing efforts that have helped more than 15,000 people exit homelessness since 2018 through City programs including direct housing placements and relocation assistance. During that time San Francisco has also increased housing slots by 50%. San Francisco has the most permanent supportive housing of any county in the Bay Area, and the second most slots per capita than any city in the country.

“In San Francisco, we have worked aggressively to increase housing, shelter, and services for people experiencing homelessness, and we are building on these efforts every day,” said Mayor London Breed. “Every day our encampment outreach workers are going out to bring people indoors and our City workers are connecting people to housing and shelter. This support from the federal government is critical and will allow us to serve people in need and address encampments in our neighborhoods.”

The funding towards supporting the renewal projects in San Francisco include financial support for a mix of permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and transitional housing projects. In addition, the CoC award will support Coordinated Entry projects to centralize the City’s various efforts to address homelessness. This includes $2.1 million in funding for the Coordinated Entry system to improve access to housing for youth and survivors of domestic violence.

“This is a good day for San Francisco,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “HUD’s Continuum of Care funding provides vital resources to a diversity of programs and projects that have helped people to stabilize in our community. This funding is a testament to our work and the work of our nonprofit partners.”

The 2024 Continuum of Care Renewal Awards Include:

$42.2 million for 29 renewal PSH projects that serve chronically homeless, veterans, and youth
$318,000 for one new PSH project, which will provide 98 affordable homes for low-income seniors in the Richmond District
$445,00 for one Transitional Housing (TH) project serving youth
$6.4 million dedicated to four Rapid Rehousing (RRH) projects that serve families, youth, and survivors of domestic violence
$750,00 for two Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) projects
$2.1 million for three Coordinated Entry projects that serve families, youth, chronically homeless, and survivors of domestic violence

In addition, the 2023 CoC Planning Grant, now increased to $1,500,000 from $1,250,000, was also approved. Planning grants are submitted non-competitively and may be used to carry out the duties of operating a CoC, such as system evaluation and planning, monitoring, project and system performance improvement, providing trainings, partner collaborations, and conducting the PIT Count.

“We are very appreciative of HUD’s support in fulfilling our funding request for these critically important projects for San Francisco that help so many people trying to exit homelessness,” said Del Seymour, co-chair of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board. “This funding will make a real difference to people seeking services and support in their journey out of homelessness.”

In comparison to last year’s competition, this represents a $770,000 increase in funding, due to a new PSH project that was funded, an increase in some unit type Fair Market Rents (FMRs) and the larger CoC Planning Grant. In a year where more projects had to compete nationally against other communities, this represents a significant increase.

Nationally, HUD awarded nearly $3.16 billion for over 7,000 local homeless housing and service programs including new projects and renewals across the United States.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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April 19, 2024

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Barbara Lee

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Issues Statement on Deaths of Humanitarian Aid Volunteers in Gaza 

On April 2, a day after an Israeli airstrike erroneously killed seven employees of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a humanitarian organization delivering aid in the Gaza Strip, a statement was release by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-12). “This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

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1 week ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

By California Black Media

“This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

The same day, it was confirmed by the organization that the humanitarian aid volunteers were killed in a strike carried out by Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Prior to the incident, members of the team had been travelling in two armored vehicles marked with the WCF logo and they had been coordinating their movements with the IDF. The group had successfully delivered 10 tons of humanitarian food in a deconflicted zone when its convoy was struck.

“This is not only an attack against WCK. This is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the direst situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said Erin Gore, chief executive officer of World Central Kitchen.

The seven victims included a U.S. citizen as well as others from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Palestine.

Lee has been a vocal advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza and has supported actions by President Joe Biden to airdrop humanitarian aid in the area.

“Far too many civilians have lost their lives as a result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reprehensible military offensive. The U.S. must join with our allies and demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire – it’s long overdue,” Lee said.