Warren: GOP senators 'fundamentally wrong' on consumer bureau

By Peter Schroeder - 02/13/13 04:46 PM ET

Senate Democrats are mounting pressure on their Republican colleagues to allow for a floor vote on the president's nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who came up with the idea for the watchdog and helped set it up, accused Republicans of wanting to stifle the agency's work as they continue to block a vote on Richard Cordray to stay on as the bureau's director.

"We shouldn't have a system where more political stalemates just create more bad government," she said Wednesday.

"The notion that a minority can hold up the laws of the United States by using the filibuster on an appointment is fundamentally wrong," she added.

A filibuster-proof bloc of Republicans have vowed they will not consider Cordray's nomination until there are several structural changes made to the bureau, including making its funding subject to congressional appropriations and replacing the director position with a bipartisan commission. GOP lawmakers contend the new bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, is unaccountable as is.

But Democrats contended Wednesday, as they have for months in this long-running feud, that such efforts are merely an attempt to defang the agency.

"These are not technical, smart corrections," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.). "This is designed to take away its independent status, taking away other aspects of the agency to basically eviscerate it so it won't operate."

"It's clear why they are blocking Rich Cordray as the leader of this agency, they simply don't want that kind of Wall Street oversight," added Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

President Obama officially submitted Cordray's nomination to the Senate Wednesday, along with three nominees for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). All four of those spots are currently filled by controversial recess appointments as Cordray ran into the exact same GOP blockade when he was first nominated in 2011. A court has ruled that the NLRB appointments are unconstitutional. Cordray's appointment is being challenged as part of a separate legal challenge, but since it came on the same day as the NLRB picks, many believe his position is in danger as well.

The trio of Democratic senators were harshly critical of attempts to bring the CFPB's budget under appropriations, arguing it would subject the bureau to political influence and allow Republicans to starve it of resources.

However, they were less aggressive in attacking the GOP demand to make the CFPB into a commission. Only when asked by reporters about that demand did the senators call it unnecessary.

"This agency has been very effective as it's been designed," said Reed.

"Trying to get five appointments through is not somehow easier than trying to get one through," added Warren.