over the course of her career as a low professor, consumer advocate and politician, warren has made a name for herself fighting for regular folks. taking on the nations financial elite and the powerfully entrenchd in washington. as a united states senator one of her most defining moments takes place during the confirmation of then nominee for attorney general jeff sessions. she was warned. she was given an explanation. nevertheless she persisted. part of me sort of said, oh mitch mcconnell you chose the wrong woman to fight with. it was a fight that started a movement. i rise today to express my strong opposition to the nomination of senator sessions. she s arguing against jeff sessions to be attorney general in early 2017. a person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws.
under trump s skin and trump does not like being taken on by powerful people, particularly powerful women. warren is one of the leading voices of the democratic party today. yet she s only been a senator since 2013 and her path to washington has been anything but straightforward. her life is a story of real perseverance and unexpected turns. and that narrative starts from the very beginning. i was a late in life baby, as they used to be called back then. and my mother always called me the surprise. i was about 30 before it occurred to me what that meant. elizabeth ann herring is born june 22, 1949 in oklahoma city, oklahoma. she s the youngest of four and the only girl in donald and pauline herring s family. they always saw themselves as middle class people.
to file for bankruptcy. we held them off for 10 years. for 10 years in the fight and in the end lost. lost big. the banks got basically everything they wanted. but there is something good that comes out of this story. and that is i ve learned about fighting. i learned about fighting in washington. i learned about fighting against those with power. power he was 34% eastern european. so i went onto ancestry, soon learned that one of our ancestors we thought was italian was eastern european. this is my ancestor who i didn t know about. he looks a little bit like me, yes. ancestry has many paths to discovering your story. get started for free at ancestry.com like i feel baby then come on, , oh come on
collapse. the stock market plummets. panic spreads and another great depression seems imminent. we re in the midst of a serious financial crisis. and the federal government is responding with decisive action. congress establishes the troubled asset relief program, or t.a.r.p. in october 2008, authorizing 700 billion dollars in taxpayer money to bail out the countries financial institutions. at the same time congress creates a commission to watch over the program and to study possible regulatory reforms. the motion is adopted. professor elizabeth warren is tapped for the job. i m at home in cambridge can and the phone rings and this man says. and i said who? and he said harry reid, the leader of the united states senate. i want you to come to washington. i want you to do something for me. and the country. and try to put some accountability on how this bail
now the yes is, who will run this new agency? for many the answer is obvious. there were a lot of people who were highly engaged after the financial crisis in how the government was going to respond. and a lot of these people saw elizabeth warren as their champion. but there was a problem, in washington. she was so controversial and had so much opposition from, certainly republicans, and democrats. and democrats told obama that is she would not be confirmed. the white house felt this contentious senate confirmation process could drag on for month asks they wanted to start guilding the new agency now. the president only offers her a temporary job setting up the agency. she ll have direct access to me and secretary geithner and she ll oversee a staff at the treasury department that s already begun to work on this task. good luck. warren takes a leave of absence from harvard. as she sets up the agency, there