WASHINGTON — The White House has undertaken an extraordinary push this week to promote the confirmation of a director for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, despite signs that Senate Republicans will not budge from their vow to block any nomination to the post unless Democrats agree to overhaul the agency’s structure.
“Does anyone here think the problem that led to our financial crisis was too much oversight of mortgage lenders or debt collectors?” President Obama asked his audience during a speech on Tuesday in Kansas. To amplify that message, White House officials in recent days have conducted several briefings with reporters and arranged special access for print and television journalists from seven states where the administration thinks it might sway moderate Republican senators to break ranks.
The goal is to get the necessary 60 votes on Thursday to end Senate debate on the nomination of Richard Cordray, a former attorney general of Ohio, to be the consumer agency’s first director. Forty-five of the 47 Senate Republicans signed a letter in May vowing not to allow a vote unless Congress was given more oversight of the agency, including budgeting authority.
The consumer bureau, a legislative response to the predatory mortgage lending practices that many critics think were partly responsible for the financial crisis, was established as part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act, which was signed into law in July 2010.
The law gives the consumer agency authority over nonbank financial companies that were barely regulated, if at all — entities like payday lenders, credit reporting agencies, mortgage companies and debt collectors. Those institutions have been accused of preying on lower-income families, prodding them into mortgages with escalating interest rates, charging high rates of interest for short-term loans and using abusive debt collection methods.
The law vests that power in the agency’s director, however, rather than the agency itself — a departure from normal bureaucratic structure. After the law was enacted, the inspectors general of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board issued opinions saying the bureau could not assume its new powers without a confirmed director in place.
“It’s not how we would have done it, to be sure,” Neal Wolin, deputy Treasury secretary, said on Wednesday. “But we knew from enactment that in order to get these additional powers there would need to be a director confirmed.”
Republicans, led by Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, have said they think the agency is essentially unaccountable to anyone, including Congress, in part because it has the authority to set its own budget, drawing on money from the Federal Reserve and therefore not subject to Congressional appropriations.
Republicans have also pressed for the single director to be replaced with a board, much like those governing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And the critics want to ease the ability of banking regulators to overrule any regulations drawn up by the consumer bureau that might interfere with the safety and soundness of the banking system.
“We support strong and effective consumer protection,” Mr. Shelby and the other Republican senators wrote to Mr. Obama in May. “The present structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, however, violates basic principles of accountability and our democratic values.”
White House officials and other supporters of the bureau maintain that there is plenty of accountability in the bureau’s structure. The director must report to Congress on its activities twice yearly. There is a cap on its annual budget. And its rules can be overturned by a two-thirds vote of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which includes the heads of the major financial regulators.
Several Democratic senators said Wednesday that the aims of their Republican colleagues were clearly out of step with the mood of the nation. Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, accused Republicans of wanting to protect Wall Street rather than consumers.
The White House is specifically focusing on voters in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Tennessee and Utah, hoping they will contact their senators and urge them to allow a vote on the nomination. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will be interviewed at the White House by local news anchors from Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Memphis and Portland, Me.
Senator Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican, did not sign the Republicans’ May letter and has already said he will vote to end debate on Thursday. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the other Republican who did not sign the letter, has not declared her position. A spokesman for her did not respond to an inquiry on Wednesday.
One of the moderate Republican senators from the target states, Susan M. Collins of Maine, is not biting, at least so far.
“I actually voted for the Dodd-Frank bill, but I am completely opposed to appointing a nominee to head this bureau until we correct the very serious structural flaws that are in the bill,” Ms. Collins said. “This has nothing to do with Mr. Cordray. He’s clearly a qualified individual with a good reputation. It has everything to do with accountability for how money is spent in government.”
Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said the Republicans’ strategy of denying an appointment because they dislike the way a law was structured carried a dangerous precedent.
“It’s not typical and not very desirable in lots of ways,” he said, “because that would mean no legislation is good after the Congress that passed it.”
Without the 60 votes, Mr. Obama’s options are limited. He can try for a recess appointment, but Congress has blocked that avenue before and could be expected to do so again. The White House could make some horse-trading promises in exchange for future support of some senators’ favorite issues. Or it could agree to the structural changes that Republicans are seeking — something Mr. Obama said Tuesday that he would never do.
“Consumers deserve to have someone whose job it is to look out for them,” he said. “I intend to make sure they do. And I want you to hear me, Kansas: I will veto any effort to delay or defund or dismantle the new rules that we put in place.”
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