WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama moved Monday to get a new consumer-protection bureau up and running, introducing a former Ohio attorney general as director, in an apparent acknowledgment that the woman who masterminded the agency couldn’t win Senate confirmation.
In a Rose Garden ceremony under sunny skies, Obama announced he had chosen Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. At the same time, Obama vowed to resist any efforts to block its work.
“We are going to stand up this bureau and ensure it is doing the right thing for middle-class families all across the country,” he said.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a central feature of a law Congress passed last year that overhauled the rules governing the financial sector. The agency will serve as a government watchdog over mortgages, credit cards and other forms of lending when it officially begins its work Thursday.
Obama and Cordray were joined by Elizabeth Warren, a special assistant to the president who had been charged with getting the agency started. Warren is widely considered the bureau’s architect, and consumer groups wanted her to be its leader. But she was strongly opposed by Republicans and would have faced a difficult path to confirmation.
The president applauded Warren’s work as an advocate for the American public.
“She’s become perhaps the leading voice in our country on behalf of consumers,” he said. “She’s done it while facing some very tough opposition.”
Some progressive groups, while complimentary of Cordray, made their continued preference for Warren known.
Republicans have already threatened to block the Senate confirmation of Cordray, as well. The 52-year-old is considered a Warren ally and has been working with her as director of enforcement for the agency.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it had deep concerns over how Cordray would use the agency’s “broad powers.”
