The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has too much power and President Barack Obama’s choice to lead it will be blocked until the agency is made more accountable, Senate Republicans said Tuesday.
At a Banking Committee confirmation hearing on Richard Cordray’s nomination, Republicans did not assail the credentials of the president’s pick, a former Ohio attorney general. Instead, they complained that the bureau’s director will have too much independence and said other federal financial regulators would be unable to curb the agency’s actions, even if its rulings threaten to cause instability in the banking system.
“You’re caught between a big substantive debate here, as you well know,” the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, told Cordray. “That’s going to have to be resolved, I think, before we move this nomination farther.”
Associated Press
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