That former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray has a smaller public profile than Elizabeth Warren is irrelevant when Republicans have already pledged to oppose anyone nominated to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
Republicans made it clear on Sunday that they were no more likely to confirm Mr. Cordray than Ms. Warren. Forty-four Republican senators have signed a letter saying they would refuse to vote on any nominee to lead the bureau, demanding instead that the agency replace a single leader with a board of directors.
“Until President Obama addresses our concerns by supporting a few reasonable structural changes, we will not confirm anyone to lead it,” Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the banking committee, said in a written statement on Sunday.
The Times portrays this as a simple argument over the structure of the agency, but it’s more than that. It’s not so much the configuration of the CFPB that bothers Republicans as much as it is the entire enterprise; the GOP simply doesn’t believe in government protection for financial consumers and is willing to abuse its oversight power in Congress to undermine the CFPB at its foundations.
It's hard to quantify the amount of chutzpah on display here; not only are “anti-bailout” Republicans giving a hand to the financial industry, two years after it almost destroyed the economy, but they're ignoring a decade of reprehensible behavior by Wall Street, when financial institutions preyed on the ignorance of middle- and low-income people. To the extent that there's an analogy in recent history, it would be as if Democrats opposed the Department of Homeland Security and worked to undermine it -- and regulations designed to improve America's intelligence agencies -- with filibusters, “oversight” hearings and blatant attacks on the legitimacy of the agency.
Of course, President Bush would have responded by denouncing Democratic attempts to undermine American national security. At present, Republicans are jeopardizing our economic security, but I’d be shocked if President Obama took to his podium to say anything.
