Gwen Moore does not seem like anybody’s idea of a corporate stooge. The Milwaukee Democrat, a single mom who once survived on welfare, has sponsored efforts to boost public housing, reproductive freedom, food-stamp benefits, Social Security payments, environmental protection, veterans’ benefits, and the minimum wage. And that’s just in the past year.

So it’s strange to see Moore associated with one of the more noxious campaigns underway on Capitol Hill: the Wall Street effort to unravel key sections of Dodd-Frank. After all, the 2010 financial reform was meant to curb the very same excesses that, not so long ago, devastated the economy and put many of Moore’s constituents out of their jobs and their homes.

The assault on Dodd-Frank relies on support from three different groups. The GOP isn’t shy about its antipathy to government regulations, and a pro-business coalition known as the New Democrats has come to its aid. But there is also a third, lesser-known faction: the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Moore, along with colleagues like New York’s Gregory Meeks, Georgia’s David Scott, Missouri’s Lacy Clay, and Alabama’s Terri Sewell, has pushed for a host of seemingly arcane measures that would undermine Dodd-Frank’s rules on financial derivatives, the complex contracts at the heart of the 2008 meltdown. She is the co-sponsor of multiple measures that would once again allow Wall Street to shift its riskiest transactions out of the view of regulators.

The CBC is not an organization known for airing its dirty laundry in public. But over the last year, the tawdriness of its pro–Wall Street votes has become so blatant that several members have started to push back, led by Maxine Waters, the veteran Los Angeles legislator who serves as the top Democrat on the financial services panel. To many in the CBC, it feels like a battle for the storied caucus’s soul—and the result could dictate the direction of economic policy for the Democratic Party at large.

“People are sick about what they’re doing,” says one CBC member. “Some things are just uncharacteristic of certain people. Everybody here has a brand. If your brand is down with the people, standing up for the little guy, then all of a sudden you’re on some bills that have got you helping Goldman Sachs have looser regulations on derivatives? It’s like—wait, what the hell is that?”