In less than two years of existence, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ably begun to fulfill its mission of bringing fairness and transparency to the fast-and-loose world of consumer banking and lending. Yet even as Director Richard Cordray was outlining that record in testimony before the Senate banking committee today, several Senators persisted in calling for radical changes in the CFPB’s funding and leadership.

Their real agenda was spelled out last week by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when he acknowledged that “If I had my way, we wouldn’t have the [CFPB] at all.”

McConnell is one of 43 Senators who have threatened to block a vote on Cordray’s re-nomination. They are using the confirmation process as leverage to place the bureau under a commission chosen by party leaders instead of a director; and to have it funded through annual congressional appropriations, rather than through a share of the budget of the Federal Reserve, where the agency is housed. The “reforms” they seek would subject the bureau to partisan gridlock and endless political intimidation.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren said at the hearing: “For more than a year now, a minority in the Senate has been trying to block your nomination, trying to reopen a debate that was resolved three years ago…[T]hey tried to kill that agency and they lost that fight three years ago. Then they tried to weaken the agency. They lost that fight because they didn’t have the votes. And today they know they still don’t have the votes to undercut the agency. So they are determined to hold your nomination hostage.  It seems pretty clear what’s going on here….  This is about a minority that doesn’t want a watchdog that will keep an eye on the big banks to make sure they don’t cheat their customers.”