Warren deflects questions on nomination to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Elizabeth Warren, a potential nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), dodged questions on Tuesday about whether she would accept a recess appointment to the post, which would avoid the need for Senate confirmation.

"There's a process in place that the president is using to try to figure out what to do to head the new consumer agency, and we've done what we can to contribute to that," Warren said in a CNBC interview in which she was asked about a recess appointment. "Beyond that, that's in his lane. I spend 14 hours a day trying to get the pieces of this new consumer agency put together."

When pressed on whether she wanted the job, Warren replied, "The job I want is the job I'm doing right now, and that is putting this consumer agency together."

Speculation is mounting that Warren, a White House adviser who is helping to put the CFPB together, may not be nominated because she might not win Senate confirmation. House Financial Services Committee ranking member Barney Frank (D-Mass.), whose Wall Street reform bill created the CFPB last year, said this week that her confirmation is in doubt in the Senate, and speculated that President Obama may not nominate her for that reason.

Warren testified last week before the Financial Services Committee, where she indicated opposition to Republican plans to create a five-member commission to head the CFPB. She reiterated arguments against that idea on Tuesday by noting that the new agency's decisions will be able to be overturned by other agencies. "We have nothing like that anywhere in government," she said.

She also broadly rejected Republican claims that the CFPB is worrisome because it would be the most powerful agency ever created.

"The notion that somehow if you're speaking out on behalf of consumers we need to beat you down a little more, there need to be fewer powers … that just seems wrong to me," she said.