Warren to oppose Obama Treasury pick

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) plans to oppose a top Treasury Department nominee just selected by President Obama.

Warren, who was named a member of Senate Democratic leadership Thursday, plans to vote against Antonio Weiss to serve as the department’s undersecretary of domestic finance, according to her office. The president nominated Weiss Wednesday.

{mosads}Weiss, the current head of global banking at Lazard, has attracted some attention because he helped Burger King in an acquisition of the Canadian company Tim Horton’s. The deal was structured as a tax inversion, a contentious move of late in which a U.S. company acquires a foreign competitor and is able to take advantage of that nation’s lower rate and avoid U.S. taxes in the process.

President Obama made railing against the corporate strategy a frequent populist theme in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and the Treasury Department actually crafted rules aimed at making them more difficult.

Among Warren’s concerns are Weiss’s history with inversions, as well as his deep background in investment banking. Wary of too many high finance experts within the administration, Warren says she would prefer a different perspective in that position, which includes oversight of implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. 

Warren has joined with fellow Democrats to scuttle Obama’s preferred picks in the past. She was one of several Democrats to publicly oppose Larry Summers to take over the Federal Reserve. Obama reportedly favored his former economic adviser for the chairman role, but opted instead to nominate Janet Yellen for the position as intraparty dissent emerged.

A Warren spokeswoman declined to say if she will be working with her colleagues to build opposition to the Weiss nomination. If Warren declines to campaign against the pick, her influence against the nominee could be limited. As a Treasury nominee, Weiss will have to be cleared by the Finance Committee, of which Warren is not a member, as opposed to the Banking Committee, where she has a seat.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), another outspoken Wall Street critic who does sit on Finance, has not yet reached a decision on Weiss and is reviewing his record, according to his spokeswoman.

But Democrats are clearly aware of the bright spotlight Warren commands on nearly every issues she tackles, having carved out a new spot within the Senate leadership team specifically for her, as a special policy adviser.

“I expect her to be Elizabeth Warren,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) after she was added to the team. Reid will continue to lead Senate Democrats as minority leader in the new Congress, after Republicans take power of the chamber.

—This post updated at 12:05 p.m.