Richard Cordray — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
 Richard Cordray in 2011. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) |
Status: Richard Cordray is the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He will have to be confirmed by the Senate in order to serve beyond the end of this year. Senator Harry Reid has moved a Senate vote on his nomination to July.
Republicans have been blocking Cordray since Obama first nominated him, not because they have any particular issue with Cordray himself, but because they feel the agency he was chosen to lead has been given too much power. The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank bank reform law — despite Republican opposition — and its job, ostensibly, is to protect consumers from harmful banking practices such as those that brought about the foreclosure crisis. The nomination is further complicated because Cordray is a recess appointment. Two courts invalidated other recess appointments that Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board on the same day that Obama appointed Cordray. The Obama administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, and whatever they decide would presumably also apply to Cordray. Politico reports that the banking industry — which is responsible for much of the anti-CFPB lobbying effort — publicly supports calls to block Cordray, but is privately tiring of the fight, because “Cordray has proven to be a more open and reasonable regulator than they anticipated.” |
