(Source: Jim Young/REUTERS)
Responding to the news that the White House was
considering Warren deputy Raj Date to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says that he and his Republican colleagues absolutely will
not allow the American public to be protected> from predatory lenders. There's no way,
he says, that the Republicans will let the CFPB do the job it was created for, reiterating his vow to block
any nominee until the new agency is made toothless.
Democrats’ top pick for the job, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, is in charge of setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but has become a polarizing figure among Republicans. The White House instead is considering one of her lieutenants, Raj Date, a veteran of Capital One and Deutsche Bank, as an alternative, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But an aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that the lawmaker stands by his vow to block any candidate. Late last month, McConnell led 44 senators in a letter to the White House calling for structural changes to the bureau. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has accused GOP opponents of discriminating against Warren because she is female, but McConnell’s complaints are much broader....
Republicans want the bureau to be run by a five-member commission rather than a single director. They also called for tougher oversight of the bureau by existing banking regulators and said the new agency should be funded by congressional appropriations. Under the current structure, the bureau’s budget is carved from the Federal Reserve.
A good deal of the opposition to the CFPB lies in the rabid hatred of the Republican for Warren herself, and Rep. Barney Frank is right, it's blatantly sexist. That's demonstrated clearly in the deplorable and disrespectful treatment she's received at the hands of House Republicans. She's smart, she's effective, and a threat—she beat them when they were trying to kill the bureau in the legislative process.
That's just part of the fight, though. The other part is that the opponents to the CFPB and Warren owe the allegiance not to the constituents who voted them into office, but the big-monied financial interests that keep them there, lining their campaign coffers. An informed and educated public is a dangerous thing to Republicans, and to the industry that finances them. So the hell with us. It's our place to be screwed by Wall Street.
