Testimony by White House consumer adviser Elizabeth Warren before a House subcommittee broke down into acrimony when the panel's Republican chairman accused her of lying about the terms of her appearance.
Warren testified on Tuesday before a House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform panel about her efforts to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency Republicans and Wall Street do not like and want to gut.
The hearing focused on disputes over the scope of the agency's power, but her appearance ended in heated wrangling over how long she would testify.
About an hour into the hearing Republicans sought to temporarily adjourn for votes. Warren objected to sticking around for more questions upon their return, saying her afternoon was packed with meetings and that the committee had agreed she would only stay an hour.
"Congressman, we had an agreement," she told Republican subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry after some back-and-forth.
"You had no agreement, you are making this up, Ms. Warren," McHenry responded.
The committee's lead Democrat, Elijah Cummings, jumped in, telling McHenry, "I'm trying to be cordial here, you just accused the lady of lying."
Like Republicans give a damn. And what really galls me is that having grown up in NC-10, I can tell you that these are hard-working furniture factory folks, working in what's left of North Carolina's rapidly dwindling manufacturing base. The textile mills and the GE transformer plant were killed by NAFTA. The fiber optic cable plants here are next.
When the dot-com boom was going strong in 1998-1999, unemployment was literally 2% in Catawba County. When that bubble went unemployment jumped to near 10% in 2002. We got things down to 5% or so in 2008, but when the financial crisis hit the unemployment in the county tripled to 15% by June 2009. It's 11-12% now and will stay above 10% for a very, very long time.
This is the prime example of what Republican economic practices did to America and why America needs the CFPB. But Patrick McHenry is going to do everything he can to hand over as much power as possible to the banks that wrecked our economy.
Someone should point out that unemployment in NC-10 has more than doubled on average since Patrick McHenry took office in 2007. In January 2000 the unemployment rate for the district was about 2.5% In January 2010 it was 16.5%. And yet Republicans have been in charge of NC-10 since 1969.
Go figure.
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