The Senate Banking Committee voted 12-10 for Richard Cordray’s re-nomination as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In other words, 10 Senators voted against, even though none has questioned Cordray’s qualifications or performance. And those 10 speak for a total of 43 who are threatening to block a confirmation vote unless CFPB supporters agree to changes that would dramatically weaken the agency’s funding and authority.
We urge you to respond to press coverage of this story with a letter to the editor.
Here are four sample letters:
If one or both your Senators are among the confirmation-blocking 43:
Senator [INSERT NAME] voted against the nomination of Richard Cordray to continue as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
What in the world of dysfunctional politics is going on here? This new agency was created to bring fairness and transparency to the world of credit cards, mortgages, education loans, auto loans, debt collection, credit scoring and other financial products and practices. In just a year and a half, the CFPB has ably begun to fulfill that important mission by (among other things):
- Returning nearly half a billion dollars to consumers cheated by credit card companies;
- Moving to end the era of mortgages designed to rake in up-front fees before they self-destruct;
- Standing up for students and families trapped in high-cost private education loans; and deceptive lending practices; and
- Protecting military families against illegal foreclosures and deceptive lending practices.
Cordray has won praise from bankers and consumer advocates, and from Republicans (including many on the banking committee) as well as Democrats. And yet, Senator [NAME] and 42 of his colleagues are trying to use the confirmation process to bargain for changes that would dramatically weaken the CFPB’s funding and effectiveness.
Naturally, they claim to be concerned about consumer safety. Well, if they want us to believe it, they had better rethink their position on this nomination. It’s time for them to come to terms with the CFPB and let it do its job.
Opponents are trying to gut the CFPB, not fix it:
Make no mistake: the goal of the Senators demanding “reform” of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is to gut the agency, not fix it. They’ve called for an end to its independent funding, enhanced authority for a group of other financial regulators to veto its rules, and the replacement of its single director with a bipartisan commission. That’s a recipe for endless gridlock and guaranteed ineffectuality.
The Senate faces a simple choice: allow an up/down vote on this nomination, or open the door to more of what the CFPB is working hard to prevent – abusive and deceptive banking and lending practices like those that, just a few years ago, fed an epidemic of foreclosures, saddled millions of Americans with unmanageable debt, and triggered a financial and economic calamity from which the nation is barely beginning to recover.
What’s really unprecedented in this fight:
Forty-three Senators have threatened to block a vote on confirming Richard Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unless the other side agrees to dramatically weaken that agency. They speak of the “nearly unprecedented powers” of the CFPB and its director.
But their claims are absurd. The CFPB is just one of a number of financial regulators with single directors and independent funding – two of the main things its critics want to change. In addition, the CFPB already faces serious checks on its power, including a provision of the law making its decisions, unlike those of other bank oversight agencies, subject to veto by a committee of financial regulators known as the Financial Stability Oversight Council.
The only unprecedented piece of this story is the effort to derail a nomination because of objections to the agency’s existence rather than to the nominee, whose performance and qualifications have won almost universal praise. The Senate historian looked for another such case, and couldn’t find one.
The CFPB’s critics claim to be standing up for constitutional principles. The Founders would be appalled.
Calling out the 43 Senators as obstructionists:
Let me see if I understand what Senator [NAME] and 42 of [his/her] colleagues are up to. They have vowed to block Richard Cordray’s re-nomination as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unless the other side agrees to drastically reduce the consumer bureau’s authority and funding.
Weren’t these questions decided in 2010, when Congress passed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that created the CFPB? Since when did the confirmation process become a chance to undo legislation passed by wide majorities in both the House and Senate? And where is all this heading? In recent years, it has become common to filibuster nominees on the basis of trivial, ancient, or irrelevant items on their resumes. Are we going to extend this practice to nominees, like Mr. Cordray, whose qualifications and performance are essentially unquestioned? Isn’t the Senate dysfunctional enough already?
Polls show strong and broad public support for the bureau, across party lines. No one has questioned Mr. Cordray’s qualifications or performance. Even many financial industry leaders agree that the CFPB, under his leadership, has been a fair and reasonable regulator. He should be confirmed without further delay or gamesmanship.