This could well be one of those (many!) issues that are making Republican voters queasy about their party. Their senators are doing whatever they can to destroy the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Quite apart from anything else, this smacks of revenge against fellow senator, Elizabeth Warren, who has been a tenacious advocate for all of us and, thus, an enemy of Wall Street's powerful lobby within the Senate.
When the Dodd-Frank financial reform law first passed, Senate Republicans refused to confirm a director for the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They promised to block any nominee — regardless of that nominee’s qualifications for the job — unless the Bureau was weakened and made subservient to the same bank regulators who failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis. President Obama was thus forced to recess appoint Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to be the Bureau’s first director. Now that Obama has renewed Cordray’s nomination, the Senate GOP is again promising to block any nominee unless the Bureau is watered down. ...Think Progress
Here's what Republicans want instead: "... A commission (instead of a lone director) and subject the CFPB to the appropriations process in order to stuff it full of appointees with no interest in regulating and starve it of funds." Sound familiar? Straight up, it's a play for a return to the financial corruption that got us in trouble and then, inevitably, the next crash.
