On Thursday, while House Republicans were dealing with a small Medicare privatization snafu, their Senate counterparts laid down an impossible marker. Forty four of their 47 members have signed on to a letter threatening to filibuster any nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless it is dramatically weakened.
“We will not support the consideration of any nominee, regardless of party affiliation, to be the CFPB director until the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reformed,” reads a letter, co-authored by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the Banking Committee.
Congress created the CFPB, despite GOP opposition, as part of the Wall Street reform law, to protect consumers from predatory actors in the financial industry. Its intellectual godmother is Elizabeth Warren, whom President Obama has tasked with standing up the agency. Despite her popularity, she’s been a long-shot to run the Bureau when it officially launches — largely because of financial industry and Republican (and even some Democratic) opposition. Indeed, former Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) — who poured cold water on the idea of nominating Warren — warned that if Democrats tried to jam a director through the Senate without bipartisan support, Republicans would go to war against the Bureau and try to gut it.
