Warren Shoots to Top of Short List for CFPB JobBy: David Dayen - FDL
Tuesday April 26, 2011 6:10 am
<snip>
So Warren was the emissary sent to Senate Democrats’ offices to warn them about an imminent recess appointment. Which could be herself. And the language here is crucial: a director nominated in May, given the pace of the Senate, cannot possibly get confirmed within a couple months. So we’re headed toward a recess appointment.
The main hurdle, at least publicly, for a Warren nomination was the difficulty or near-impossibility, depending on who you talk to, of getting her confirmed. A recess appointment renders that argument moot. She would be able to lead the agency right from the start, as she has already been doing, and mold it in her image with the full set of powers and authorities.
The more private hurdle was the opposition of those inside the Administration to Warren in a strong consumer protection role. But while I’m sure that still exists, perhaps as high as the Treasury Secretary, the fact that candidates like Ted Kaufman and Jennifer Granholm not only turned the job down, but urged the White House to pick Warren, makes it extremely difficult for the Warren detractors to hold out. The independent power base for Warren, separate and apart from the White House, has worked every angle. And it may just succeed.Link:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/26/warren-shoots-to-top-of-short-list-for-cfpb-job/***************************************************************************************
Barney Frank: “Republicans are completely afraid of Elizabeth Warren”By: David Dayen - FDL
Friday May 27, 2011 12:33 pm
<snip>
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, thinks that the Republican efforts to both block any appointment for the Directorship of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to now block recess appointments so a Director cannot be installed, comprises an “outrageous abuse of the Constitution,” and must mean that the “Republicans are completely afraid of Elizabeth Warren,” who is currently setting up the bureau, and who is the leading candidate to take it over.
“It’s not an option to advise and consent, it’s a duty,” Frank told me in a brief interview. OK, it wasn’t so much an interview as it was Barney Frank talking to me and then me thanking him for the call. But here’s what he said. First, Republicans in the Senate vowed not to allow anyone to be confirmed – “not just Warren, but anyone” – unless they got their way on gutting the agency. The natural response was to use the Constitutional power of a recess appointment to navigate beyond this. But “now they’re complaining about a recess appointment,” Frank said. “They caused the problem and now they’re objecting to its solution. It’s an incredible spectacle. I’ve never seen the Republicans work so hard over anything than to stop this consumer agency.”
Frank dismissed the constraints that Republicans wanted to place on the agency, which amounted to defanging it. “They want to amend the law so bank regulators have control over what the agency does,” Frank said. “These are the regulators who Spencer Bachus (the new Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee) said their job is to serve the banks.”
Frank begged off a resolution of this issue through the Senate, saying he wasn’t familiar enough with the rules of that chamber, though he added that “my guess is that a majority can get something done.” But he saw the best avenue for success as raising public pressure over the appointment. He said that Republicans usually pull a frontal assault to get their way – wanting to repeal the health care law or roll back the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations, for example. In this case, because protecting consumers is popular, to achieve their ends of crippling the agency “they’ll do it in complicated ways.”<snip>
Link:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/05/27/barney-frank-republicans-are-completely-afraid-of-elizabeth-warren/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
