After blue tsunami, Elizabeth Warren wants to regulate everything

Democrats had a big night on Tuesday. They took back the House and Senate, flipped seats Republicans once considered safe, and handed Washington a result it will be chewing on for years.But elections have consequences, starting with the crazy things that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed over the last week alone that would make a Soviet bureaucrat flush.The Massachusetts Democrat has spent most of her career treating free enterprise as a problem for Washington to crush. With Democrats taking the Senate, she is now in line to chair the Senate Banking Committee, which would give her enormous sway over the country’s financial industry — and the companies it finances. That alone should keep you up at night. But Warren’s ambitions don’t stop at the industries her committee oversees.Take prediction markets, which compete with mainstream media to explain and predict the world. Days before the election, Warren pressed prediction markets over their election markets, even suggesting that they should be outlawed. Earlier this year, she co-sponsored legislation that would ban entire categories of event contracts, including elections.Days later, voters went to the polls and proved why prediction markets work.According to a post-election analysis, the prediction market favorite won 479 of 487 resolved races, a 98% hit rate. They were far more accurate than polls and traditional forecasting models that spend millions to get the wrong answer.The reason is that a prediction market pools the knowledge of thousands of people, each with real money on the line, into a single aggregated price. No pollster or pundit can match the Wisdom of Crowds of the American people. The Invisible Hand in action, for information.But never let facts get in the way of a dedicated socialist on the rampage.As an encore, the day before the election, Warren released a letter urging the Trump administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission to drop its effort to make it easier for American companies to go public so regular Americans can invest.Billed by SEC Chairman Paul Atkins as “Make IPOs Great Again,” the idea is to cut unnecessary disclosure requirements and regulatory burdens that keep firms from going public.Going public today is prohibitively expensive. Lawyers, accountants, and compliance specialists do not come cheap. Trimming the unnecessary burdens means more companies can raise capital, expand and hire.Warren even concedes that the number of publicly listed American companies has fallen from more than 8,000 in 1996 to roughly 4,000 in 2024 thanks to regulatory burdens. The country needs more entrepreneurs willing to build businesses, not more barriers to stop them.The same letter also objected to the SEC’s move to rescind Biden-era climate mandates for public companies. These would force businesses to churn out extensive disclosures about so-called “climate-related risks,” turning the SEC into one more arm of Washington’s climate oligarchy.When did the agency charged with protecting investors and keeping markets fair become the government’s climate police?Companies already have to disclose material financial risks to investors. Warren wants Washington to pile on more mandates no matter what they cost.For years, Democrats have disguised their climate agenda as “consumer protection” while handing the bill to consumers. The result is more paperwork for regulators, more fees for compliance consultants, and more obstacles for businesses trying to grow. None of it will lower electric bills, help American manufacturers compete with China, or put money in working families’ pockets.THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS — AND IT’S COMING FOR YOURSDemocrats should be careful what they think Tuesday’s election means. Tuesday wasn’t a vote for socialism. It was a vote against politicians who failed to deliver. Warren is raising the stakes for politicians who actively destroy.Voters wanted Washington out of their wallets. Warren is diving in for the loose change.Peter St. Onge is a Senior Economist for the Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.