Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren "will become the most powerful Democrat because she's trying to instill fear," Sen. Lindsey Graham told Newsmax.
"Extremism comes in all sizes, colors and sexes," said Graham, a South Carolina Republican who squared off with Warren in the debate on a $1.1 trillion funding bill the Senate passed late Saturday. "The double standard by which the media views the actions of a Democrat versus a Republican is still astonishing to me."
He noted how Warren attacked the funding bill because of a GOP addition that would have rolled back a provision in the Dodd-Bank financial reform legislation passed in 2010 after the banking crisis.
Warren, who is being talked about as a possible contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, called the provision a Wall Street giveaway and blasted Citigroup Inc. for its "unprecedented" control of economic policy-making."
"Washington already works really well for the billionaires and the big corporations and the lawyers and lobbyists," she said on the floor Friday night. "But what about the families who lost their homes or their jobs or their retirement savings the last time Citi bet big on derivatives and lost?"
Graham, however, noted how Warren employed methods similar to those of Sen. Ted Cruz during last year's budget debate. The Texas senator's insistence on de-funding Obamacare led to a 16-day partial federal government shutdown.
Warren had slammed Republicans for the debacle.
"She, like some on our side, created the impression that the Dodd-Frank provisions in this bill made us all Wall Street whores — and if you disagreed with her, you really were not a good Democrat," Graham told Newsmax.
"That was extremism in a very blatant form," he added, noting that "she was getting a pass" by the mainstream media.
"During this debate, she adopted the same tactics, challenged all of her Democratic and her Republican colleagues to agree with her, bring down the entire bill, or be seen as a stooge of Wall Street.
"The exact same thing you were criticizing people on our side for doing, you did yourself," he said.
The Senate approved the bill 56-40, capping a rare Saturday session that Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid called because of objections by Cruz and other conservative Republicans over funding President Barack Obama's immigration executive orders.
Graham supported the bill; Warren did not.
"Senator Warren has done the body a great disservice," Graham said, reflecting on the floor debate. "There were many Democrats who had agreed to this change.
"Dodd-Frank was an incredible overreach, increased a lot of costs to banking without protecting the consumer. It was a liberal's dream of allowing an unregulated body to, basically, control loans throughout the country."
The legislation created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection within the Federal Reserve. Neither is regulated by Congress.
"In Senator Warren's world, the only way you can protect the consumer is to consolidate all power in the government — and in this case, put all the power in the hands of the most liberal people in the country," Graham said.
"She, in my view, is an extremist who cares not about the whole salt of America, but just about those things that mean the most to her.
"She was willing to take the entire federal budget, bring it to its knees, because she didn't like one provision in the bill. And nobody in the media was calling her out."
Graham said he would keep checking Warren because "this is just the beginning of what she is going to do in the next Congress.
"She is going to be the most powerful member of the Democratic Conference, because she is going to instill fear in her colleagues to not cross the most extreme liberal agenda in the country."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.