Warren Strikes Back at Karl Rove on TARP Ad
Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren offered a fierce rebuttal to a Karl Rove-sponsored ad released Thursday that aims to paint her as a big-government, bank-bailout supporter.
"I can't find the right words to describe how wrong that is, factually wrong and morally wrong," Warren told the Boston Herald today. "Karl Rove is not telling the truth, and I think anyone who is not telling the truth shouldn't be running ads in this race."
The ad, put out by Rove's Super PAC Crossroads GPS, says Warren oversaw "how your tax dollars were spent bailing out the same banks that helped cause the financial meltdown."
Warren was involved in the TARP bailout, but served only in an oversight capacity as the head of the congressionally appointed board that monitored how the Treasury Department handed out the $700 billion bank bailout, which was passed during the Bush Administration.
The Congressional Oversight Panel was highly critical of which banks got funds and the Treasury's lack of transparency in handing them out. Warren has since then worked with the Obama Administration to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which works to prevent the unsound investment practices that led to the financial meltdown.
"Karl Rove was part of the inner circle when President Bush pushed for TARP bailouts," Warren said, according to the Herald. "Now he's using Wall Street money to attack me for being too cozy with Wall Street? I was calling out Wall Street over the TARP bill from the beginning."
Crossroads GPS has poured more than $1 million into the Massachusetts Senate race in the past two months.
The race between Warren and Republican incumbent Scott Brown is expected to be one of the most contentious in the nation as Republicans fight to win the three seats necessary to gain control of the Senate. Even though the primary is not until September, Warren is widely expected to win the Democratic nomination and take on Brown next November.