Dodd: Congress Could Defund Consumer Bureau Over Warren Interim Appointment
Outgoing Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) warned Tuesday that an interim appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "jeopardizes the existence" of the nascent agency.
The White House is considering naming Warren interim head, as the law establishing the CFPB allows, in order to get her into place immediately and head off a Senate filibuster of her nomination. Once she's in place, Obama could nominate her for the permanent position.
"I'm not enthusiastic about that and I think it'll be met with a lot of opposition," Dodd told reporters after coming off the Senate floor.
Dodd said that an interim appointment would deprive the director of the legitimacy that comes with Senate confirmation. He added that such an appointment could create a backlash that would lead Congress to defund the bureau.
"This is a big job, an important job, and it needs to be -- you've got to build the support for that institutionally or the next Congress - and none of us know what the outcome's going to be politically -- you could gut this before it even gets off the ground. If you don't have someone running it early on, it jeopardizes the existence of the consumer protection bureau," he said. Asked how Congress would gut it, he said: "Money. Take away the money. That's how you always do it."
The CFPB, however, is designed to get its funding stream from the Federal Reserve, not Congress. During the Wall Street reform debate, Dodd argued that funding from the Fed would protect the CFPB from Congressional efforts to defund it. On Tuesday, however, Dodd said that the funding stream could be altered and then killed. "They can change the funding source and kill it," said Dodd. "That can change with an amendment."
Any attempt to alter and then extinguish the CFPB would need to pass both houses of Congress and could be vetoed by the president. Dodd's twin arguments -- that the CFPB needs a director quickly, and that the director should go through the confirmation process -- are in apparent contradiction.
Huffington Post |
