South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham mocked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Sunday describing it as “something out of the Stalinist era.”
“This consumer bureau that they want to pass is under the Federal Reserve, no appropriation oversight, no board, it is something out of the Stalinist era,” said Graham on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Last week, Senate Republicans blocked the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the consumer agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
“The reason Republicans don't want to vote for it is we want a board, not one person, making all the regulatory decisions, and there's no oversight under this person. He gets a check from the Federal Reserve, we want him under the Congress so we can oversee the overseer,” Graham said explaining the GOP’s opposition.
Many Republican lawmakers said they were not opposed to Cordray’s selection but want the White House to alter how the agency functions before they will allow his appointment.
The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate Dick Durbin (Ill.) blasted Republicans for blocking Cordray’s nomination as well as that of a federal judge.
“This last week in the United States Senate ... on two separate occasions, Republicans used the filibuster, something they said they wouldn't do except under extraordinary circumstances, to stop appointment of a woman — a unanimously well-qualified woman to the U.S. district court in the district of Columbia, and to stop the appointment of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Durbin said.
"What Republicans are offering us is the same formula that brought us into this recession — cut taxes on the wealthy and cut government oversight," he added.
