Senate *finally* confirms Richard Cordray as Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief

After months of sense­less delay, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate has final­ly con­firmed for­mer Ohio Attor­ney Gen­er­al Richard Cor­dray to serve as the Direc­tor of the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau (CFPB) orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived by Eliz­a­beth War­ren and cre­at­ed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010.

By a vote of sev­en­ty-one to twen­ty-nine, the Sen­ate agreed to end debate on Cor­dray’s nom­i­na­tion and pro­ceed to a final vote.

Cor­dray was then con­firmed by a bipar­ti­san vote of six­ty-six to thir­ty-four.

The votes occurred after Sen­ate Repub­li­cans agreed to stop fil­i­bus­ter­ing Cor­dray, EPA Admin­is­tra­tor nom­i­nee Gina McCarthy, and Labor Sec­re­tary nom­i­nee Thomas Perez. In exchange, Democ­rats did not attempt to alter the Sen­ate’s rules to lim­it the use of the fil­i­buster, and the White House with­drew the nom­i­na­tions of Sharon Block and Richard F. Grif­fin, Jr. to the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board. (Kent Yoshi­ho Hiroza­wa and Nan­cy Jean Schif­fer have been nom­i­nat­ed in their stead).

Every mem­ber of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus vot­ed in favor of Cor­dray’s con­fir­ma­tion; so did a num­ber of Repub­li­cans. Mitch McConnell, set­ting a bad exam­ple for his cau­cus, vot­ed against end­ing debate and also against Cor­day’s confirmation.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkey (OR); Max Bau­cus and Jon Tester (MT); Mark Begich (AK); Repub­li­can Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­cans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID)

The roll call on the clo­ture motion for our region was iden­ti­cal to the vote on final con­fir­ma­tion. Jeers go to Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch for refus­ing to even sup­port giv­ing Cor­dray an up-or-down vote. Were there a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent in office and a Repub­li­can major­i­ty in the U.S. Sen­ate, Crapo and Risch would no doubt be loud­ly clam­or­ing for major­i­ty rule to prevail.

Now that Cor­dray has been con­firmed, the CFPB final­ly has a per­ma­nent leader (at least per­ma­nent in the sense that Cor­dray now has full author­i­ty to run the Bureau and enforce the law under the pro­vi­sions of Dodd-Frank). And that means the agency does­n’t have to wor­ry about its enforce­ment actions being chal­lenged in court due to it hav­ing oper­at­ed with­out a con­firmed director.

Ed Mierzwin­s­ki, U.S. PIRG’s Con­sumer Pro­gram Direc­tor, hailed Cor­dray’s con­fir­ma­tion as a vic­to­ry for Amer­i­can fam­i­lies.

“The CFPB was cre­at­ed to rein in the reck­less Wall Street prac­tices that blew up our econ­o­my almost five years ago. Big banks that rely on con­sumer tricks and schemes to make mon­ey have want­ed to kill the CFPB ever since, and for good rea­son: The CFPB has been enforc­ing crit­i­cal con­sumer pro­tec­tion laws, and already forced Cap­i­tal One to return $140 mil­lion in unfair cred­it card fees to con­sumers,” he said.

Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren, fresh from her smack­down of the hosts of CNBC’s Squawk Box, had the hon­or of pre­sid­ing over the Sen­ate for the con­fir­ma­tion vote and announc­ing the result (which was cap­tured on CSPAN‑2). War­ren’s office also issued a state­ment reflect­ing on the long-over­due vote.

After more than 700 days of wait­ing, Rich Cor­dray will final­ly get the con­fir­ma­tion vote he deserves from the U.S. Sen­ate. Direc­tor Cor­dray has won praise from con­sumer and indus­try groups, and from Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, for his fair and effec­tive approach. With Direc­tor Cor­dray’s con­fir­ma­tion, we will be able to say loud­ly, clear­ly, and with con­fi­dence: the con­sumer agency is the law of the land and is here to stay. We fought hard for the agency, and we proved that big change is still pos­si­ble in Wash­ing­ton. Now we have the watch­dog that the Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve — a watch­dog look­ing out for mid­dle class fam­i­lies, get­ting rid of tricks, traps, and fine print, and hold­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions account­able when they break the law.

Well said. We would not have a CFPB were it not for Sen­a­tor War­ren, and we at NPI thank her for her lead­er­ship. Her tenac­i­ty and courage are inspir­ing. If more Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers fol­lowed the good exam­ple that she has set, our coun­try would be much bet­ter off. We need more leg­is­la­tors like Eliz­a­beth Warren.

Our con­grat­u­la­tions also to Richard Cor­dray on his confirmation.

What a sat­is­fy­ing day in the U.S. Sen­ate: Mitch McConnel­l’s obstruc­tion­ist Repub­li­can cau­cus final­ly caved after Har­ry Reid showed some back­bone, and Sen­a­tor War­ren presided over Richard Cor­dray’s nomination.

Let’s see, how many defeats for the big banks does this make?

1. They did­n’t want the CFPB to exist in the first place — they lost, as it was made a part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010.
2. They thought they scored a vic­to­ry by lob­by­ing against a War­ren nom­i­na­tion for CFPB direc­tor, but their med­dling had the effect of facil­i­tat­ing War­ren’s entry into the U.S. Sen­ate race in Mass­a­chu­setts against Scott Brown. (The PCCC also facil­i­tat­ed War­ren’s entry by draft­ing her).
3. They show­ered Scott Brown with mon­ey — enor­mous amounts of mon­ey, in fact — and tried to deflate War­ren’s can­di­da­cy, but she won a con­vinc­ing vic­to­ry with a dynam­ic, peo­ple-pow­ered campaign.
4. After the elec­tion, they des­per­ate­ly lob­bied to keep her off the Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee, but she was assigned to the Com­mit­tee anyway.
5. And now they have failed to keep the CFPB rud­der­less with­out a con­firmed direc­tor after Democ­rats maneu­vered to end Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ unprece­dent­ed abuse of the filibuster.

So that’s Sen­a­tor War­ren 5, the pow­er­ful Wall Street banks 0. Their armies of lob­by­ists are cer­tain­ly effec­tive in D.C., but against Eliz­a­beth War­ren, they’ve repeat­ed­ly struck out. Here’s to more vic­to­ries like this in the years to come.