Of course Elizabeth Warren would be confirmable as CFPB head. The real question: Is she nominatable?

Treasury Sec'y "Tiny Tim" Geithner pinky-swears that he's not blackballing Elizabeth Warren for the CFPB job. Of course he doesn't have to. It's doubtful that there's anyone in the administration who would offer that [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] the time of day, let alone a job of this potential importance.


"As you make your decision regarding the nominee for this position, we believe it is essential that you select someone with a proven history of standing up to unfair and abusive practices in the financial industry, particularly in the area of consumer protection. It will be especially important that the first director be someone who will not cave in when pressured by the financial industry, which we expect to be enormous."

-- from a letter to the president signed by 12 U.S.

senators regarding the choice of the first CFPB director

by Ken

THE HILL'S BLOG BRIEFING ROOM

Dodd doubts Warren's confirmability for job of consumer guardian

By Michael O'Brien

Elizabeth Warren might not have the votes to win confirmation as head of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) suggested Monday.

Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said he sensed rumblings among colleagues that Warren, the chairwoman of the panel overseeing the 2008 Wall Street bailout program, might not get the 60 votes necessary to win confirmation.

"I think Elizabeth would be a terrific nominee," Dodd told NPR's Diane Rehm on Monday. "The question is, 'Is she confirmable?' And there's a serious question about it." . . .

Two observations about the groundswell of support for Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) authorized in the newly enacted financial reform package:

(1) Contrary to the smokescreen raised the other day by Sen. Chris Dodd, of course Warren is confirmable -- provided the administration and Senate leadership are serious about getting her confirmed. Meaning that they actually mean for the CFPB to work, as opposed to giving it some low-level funding (ooh, jobs for cronies!) so it can serve as do-nothing cover for one thing we know the administration believes in: business as usual. That means making a clear and emphatic case for its mission. In other words, something like this letter sent to the White House today by a group of 12 U.S. senators. (Apologies for typos. I had to retype the letter -- I actually thought it was worth the trouble -- from this PDF file.)

Dear Mr. President:

One of the most important provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) establishes, for the first time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As you know, in the years preceding the crisis, providers of financial services offered consumers many products that were unfair, deceptive, and abusive, with disastrous effects on consumers and on our economy. In many instances, consumers were hurt because our financial regulators failed to enforce existing consumer protection laws. In other cases, because at least seven different agencies were responsible for consumer protection, no single agency viewed consumer protection as its primary responsibility. All too often this important function was relegated far down their priority list. The new CFPB will rectify these flaws and make sure the financial system also works for consumers.

The idea behind the CFPB came from the current head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren. In her 2007 article that launched the idea, Professor Warren wrote, "Just as the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) protects buyers of goods and supports a competitive market, we need the same for consumers of financial products -- a new regulatory regime, and even a new regulatory body, to protect consumers who use credit cards, home mortgages, car loans, and a host of other products." With your help, Congress was able to make this vision a reality over the objections of those in the financial services industry who spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to weaken or removed the CFPB.

Establishing and empowering the CFPB immediately is among the most important challenges that you face in implementing this historic legislation. To help ensure the CFPB is able to stand up to the power of the financial industry, Congress endowed the CFPB with a single director to be nominated by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. As you make your decision regarding the nominee for this position, we believe it is essential that you select someone with a proven history of standing up to unfair and abusive practices in the financial industry, particularly in the area of consumer protection. It will be especially important that the first director be someone who will not cave in when pressured by the financial industry, which we expect to be enormous. Only with such a leader can we properly protect consumers from the unfair, abusive, and deceptive practices that have been standard practice in too many segments of the financial industry for too long. Indeed, someone with a track record akin to that of Professor Warren would be the type of person we believe is necessary to head this Bureau.

With the enactment of Dodd-Frank, much work is now left to be done by the financial regulatory agencies, including the CFPB. We look forward to your selection of a strong nominee to head the CFPB and to working with you to assure this person's confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Putting this person in place swiftly is among the important steps necessary to implement this groundbreaking legislation to ensure that it reaches its full potential of improving the financial system. We appreciate y our serious consideration of our views.

Tom Harkin
Sherrod Brown
Bernard Sanders
Ron Wyden
Al Franken
Sheldon Whitehouse
Edward E. Kaufman
Roland Burris
Byron Dorgan
Barbara Boxer
Jeff Merkley
Mark Begich

[Um, er, I notice that Senator Dodd's name -- you know, as in "Dodd-Frank" -- isn't among the signatories. Probably he just had one of those damned pens that when you try to, you know, write with the damned thing, you get nothing. There are a lot of other missing Democratic senators, and I notice that there don't seem to be any Republican signers. Could this be like when somebody has a birthday in my office and the card gets passed around furtively for everybody to sign -- maybe this letter was being passed around and just never reached all those other Dems, and never did get shot across the aisle?]

A commitment to confirmation of a Warren nomination, and to the successful functioning of the CFPB, also means making sure that senators are forced to go on the record with their objections to the nomination, and understand that for once there will be a price to pay for defending the interests of the country's economic predators. One has to suspect that the real concern of the opponents of a Warren CFPB nomination isn't that she wouldn't be confirmed but that she would be.

SIDE NOTE: ISN'T THIS SOME SORRY SPECTACLE
CHRIS DODD IS MAKING OF HIMSELF?

The suggestion has been made that you see a pol's true colors when he/she reaches lame-duck status. Remember, back when Dodd announced that he wouldn't seek what seemed increasingly unlikely reelection, and there was speculation that, despite his longstanding bankster and Wall Street ties, he might make a powerhouse financial reform package his legacy? We discovered pretty quickly that that wasn't going to happen, that his mission was to keep whatever package ultimately passed within manageable (by financial industry standards) bounds. Now he's just embarrassing himself.

(2) I don't think there's a chance in hell that Professor Warren will be offered the job. I thought it was great theater the way Treasury Sec'y "Tiny Tim" Geithner stepped in to squelch those rumors that surfaced suddenly about him working to ensure that she wouldn't be. Absolutely untrue, his flak insisted. The secretary has the highest regard for Professor Warren, and she will definitely be considered for CFPB.

Yeah, right, she'll be "considered." As in:

Dear Professor Warren:

After careful consideration, we've decided we would sooner eat poison than let you anywhere near the CFPB.

Have a nice life.

Yours truly,
A Senior White House Official

The standard line of people inside and outside the administration preparing for Warren not getting the nod is that while she would be well-qualified, there are many other well-qualified candidates. Why, to quote Senator Dodd: "That's not the only potential nominee -- there are many fine nominees." But of course we're never told the names of any of these other "fine nominees," not even as window dressing, people to be "considered" in the same way that Professor Warren will be. Sorry, but if the best they can come up with is a stooge like Ass't Treasury Sec'y Michael Barr (now being said "to have the inside track"), maybe we ought to just forget about this whole CFPB thing.

In the most unlikely event that, for political reasons, the administration coughs up Warren's name as "the one," I think we can safely take that as a signal that CFPB nullification by other means will be the order of the day. It shouldn't be that difficult. As eight years of the Bush regime demonstrated so convincingly, when government people are determined to prove that they're incompetent, their success rate is formidable.

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