The Washington Post has a well-meaning but wrongheaded piece by Yale law professor Ian Ayers on how to break the logjam that Republicans have created around the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Forty-four Senate Republicans have written a letter to President Obama vowing to block any nominee unless the agency’s powers are substantially watered down. Progressives have been pressing Obama to make a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren.
Ayers' scheme is that Obama should make that temporary appointment of Warren but give the nomination on a permanent basis to Federal Reserve Board member Sarah Bloom Raskin.
This is a bad idea, on three counts.
Raskin is one of two real progressives on the Fed, the other being Daniel Tarullo. Both are needed there. If Raskin, formerly a pro-consumer state bank regulator in Maryland, were to leave, the Republicans would block anyone to the left of Milton Friedman. They just refused to confirm Nobel laureate Peter Diamond of MIT, a thoroughly mainstream economist.
Secondly, it's a bad idea because it would make Warren an instant lame duck. Ayers is naïve to think that just because Raskin has been confirmed for the Fed job, “It would be hard for Republican senators to argue that Raskin, as a recently confirmed Federal Reserve governor, is a bad-faith nominee.” This imputes far more rationality and fair play to the Senate Republicans than the evidence warrants.
Finally, the White House and Warren, together or separately, need to make a decision soon about whether Warren is more valuable heading the consumer bureau or running for the senate from Massachusetts. Time is running out on that decision.
A bank shot that places Warren temporarily at the bureau, undercuts the possibility of her making the senate run, then displaces her from the bureau as well. This is too clever by half—and would leave one of America's most valuable public servants to go back to her day job at Harvard Law School. A sweet job to be sure, but she has more important things to do.
