Senator Jeff Merkley was elected to the United States Senate in 2008, after spending nearly a decade in the Oregon State legislature. As former Speaker of the Oregon House, Merkley led the fight to strengthen consumer protection laws, advance workers’ rights and pass domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian couples. Merkley is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP); Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Environment and Public Works (EPW); and Budget Committees.

The sole Democrat on the Senate Banking committee to vote against Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s confirmation for a second term, Merkley is one of the Senate’s strongest advocates for Wall Street and housing reform. While leading the effort to ban high-risk trading inside the big banks, Merkley also successfully included amendments in the Wall Street reform bill to outlaw two of the most egregious predatory practices in the mortgage lending industry – prepayment penalties and bonuses loan originators receive for steering borrowers into high-cost loans. He continues to be a strong proponent of bankruptcy modification for primary mortgages –what he refers to as a “lifeline” for homeowners - and is currently crafting legislation to help families avoid foreclosure.

Professor Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University and the Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. She has written eight books and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress. Her latest two books, The Two-Income Trap and All Your Worth, were both on national best seller lists. She has been principal investigator on empirical studies funded by the National Science Foundation and more than a dozen private foundations. Warren was the Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and she was appointed as the first academic member of the Federal Judicial Education Committee. She currently serves as a member of the Commission on Economic Inclusion established by the FDIC. She also serves on the steering committees of the Tobin Project and the National Bankruptcy Conference. The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Professor Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, SmartMoney Magazine designated her one of the SmartMoney 30 for 2008, Time named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009 and 2010, and the Boston Globe named her the Bostonian of the Year in December 2009. She was also one of eight law professors to be named on the Leading Lawyers in America list compiled by Law Dragon. As a law professor, she first developed the idea for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency and has been one of its leading advocates.

David Dayen has been blogging about state and national issues since 2004. He currently writes and reports for the News Desk at FireDogLake (news.firedoglake.com). His work has appeared in the LA Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Capitol Weekly, and he has been a guest on NPR, Pacifica Radio and Air America. He is a former delegate to the California Democratic Party.

Ryan Grim covers Congress for the Huffington Post. A former reporter for Politico and Washington City Paper, he has written for The Nation, Mother Jones, Harper's and Rolling Stone and is the author of This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America. While interviewing Elizabeth Warren last year, he got a text message saying that his apartment had been foreclosed on. But that's another story.