About Elizabeth

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Warren, a fearless consumer advocate who has made her life's work the fight for middle class families, was re-elected to the United States Senate for a second term on November 6, 2018, by the people of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth is one of the nation’s leading progressive voices, fighting for big structural change that would transform our economy and rebuild the middle class. 

She has put forward bold, ambitious plans to: 

  • End lobbying as we know it and make other sweeping changes to eliminate the influence of money in our federal government through the most comprehensive anti-corruption legislation since Watergate;
  • Impose an ultra-millionaire tax on fortunes worth over $50 million to generate $2.75 trillion in revenue over ten years—enough to pay for universal child care, student debt relief, and a down payment on a Green New Deal;
  • Address the nation’s housing crisis by building more than 3 million new homes, cutting rents nationwide by 10%, and taking the first steps towards healing the legacy of housing discrimination through historic new investments in federal housing programs;
  • Extend criminal accountability to corporate executives who oversee and direct illegal scams;
  • Give workers a greater say in the decision-making process at the nation’s biggest corporations by empowering them to elect 40% of the board at the company where they work;
  • Require every public company to disclose climate-related risks;
  • Provide Puerto Rico with a path to comprehensive debt relief and rebuild the island’s infrastructure;
  • Allocate $100 billion to solve the opioid and substance use crisis; and
  • Address skyrocketing prescription drug costs, including through the public manufacturing of generic drugs.

Elizabeth consistently reaches across the aisle to deliver wins for Massachusetts, making her one of the most effective members of the Senate. She helped secure $750 million in debt relief for students who were cheated by predatory, for-profit colleges, including 4,500 Massachusetts students and more than 28,000 students across the country. Elizabeth has also helped pass legislation to double federal funding for child care, make hearing aids available over the counter, reduce out-of-pocket costs for high school students enrolled in career and technical education programs, and put over $6 billion dollars in federal funding towards the fight against the opioid epidemic.

Elizabeth has used her platform to hold some of the nation’s largest corporations and most powerful government agencies accountable for fraud, waste, and abuse. In the wake of the fake accounts scandal at Wells Fargo, her relentless public pressure led to the resignation of two Wells Fargo CEOs, John Stumpf and his successor, Tim Sloan. Elizabeth also launched an investigation to hold Equifax accountable for a data breach that exposed the personal financial information of over 140 million customers and wrote legislation to keep it from happening again. Through her oversight work, she has exposed fraud and abuse perpetrated by Trump Administration officials, including at the Department of Education, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Defense, and has successfully overturned rules that harm consumers and students.

Before becoming the first woman ever elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in 2012, Elizabeth served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—the oversight board set up in the aftermath of the financial crisis to protect taxpayers, hold Wall Street accountable, and help homeowners get back on their feet.

She is widely credited for the original thinking, political courage, and relentless persistence that led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she helped stand up and has successfully protected millions of consumers from financial tricks and traps often hidden in mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products.

As a law professor for more than 30 years, Elizabeth taught courses on commercial law, contracts, and bankruptcy. She has written more than a hundred articles and eleven books, including four national best-sellers, This Fight Is Our Fight, A Fighting Chance, The Two-Income Trap, and All Your Worth. 

Elizabeth learned first-hand about the economic pressures facing working families, growing up in a family she says was "on the ragged edge of the middle class." She got married at 19, and after graduating from college, started teaching in elementary school. Her first baby, a daughter Amelia, was born when Elizabeth was 22. When Amelia was two, Elizabeth started law school. Shortly after she graduated, her son Alex was born. Elizabeth hung out a shingle and practiced law out of her living room, but she soon returned to teaching.

Elizabeth is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers School of Law. Elizabeth and her husband Bruce Mann have been married for 41 years and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with their golden retriever, Bailey. They have three grandchildren.

 
"New Sheriff of
Wall Street"
- TIME Magazine