White House officials announced on Sunday that they would aggressively push for the confirmation of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week.
The Senate is scheduled to have its first vote on confirming President Barack Obama’s choice for director, Richard Cordray, on Thursday. Senate Democrats need to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster – something that is not expected to happen.
Ahead of that vote, though, White House officials said they would launch a media and lobbying blitz to target Republican senators in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Tennessee and Utah who have been on the fence or the most critical about confirming Cordray. Beyond talking to local media in those states, White House officials also will lobby mayors and other local officials to tell their constituents why Cordray and the bureau will help them.
“Certainly this would be among the more aggressive efforts that the president has undertaken to get a nominee confirmed,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “The White House and the president himself will devote a special effort to citizens in seven states if the senator who was elected to represent them in Washington D.C., sides with the financial industry and votes to block his nomination.”
President Obama also will emphasize to the American people that the Republicans’ resistance to Cordray on top of them opposing an extension of the payroll tax holiday showed the GOP did not have the interests of the middle class at heart.
The bureau, which was created after the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was enacted last year, is intended to regulate non-bank financial institutions including payday lenders, debt collectors and credit bureaus. Senate Democrats and President Obama have been at odds with Senate Republicans in trying to get a director for the bureau since the financial reform law was passed.
Senate Republicans have said they would not support anybody to head to the bureau until structural reforms were enacted – among those reforms include having a board of directors rather than a single director, funding the bureau through congressional appropriations instead of through the Federal Reserve and providing safety-and-soundness checks so the agency regulations do not impose costs that could lead to bank failures.
As part of their initial offense, the White House released a report on Sunday that showed the consequences middle class Americans could face if Cordray was not confirmed. The report said that members of the armed services, the elderly, students and Latinos would be most affected if a CFPB director were not in place.
“Without a director, Americans will not be protected from falling prey to many of the harmful practices that contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” the report said. “We cannot afford a system in which consumers are left in the dark about the risks they face when making financial decisions. Every day that the CFPB goes without a director is another day that American families remain at risk.”
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