Warren Keeps Up Pressure in CFPB Fight

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren has headed back to Massachusetts, but she remains engaged in the partisan fight in Washington over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren, who has formed a committee to explore a run for the U.S. Senate next year, is asking her supporters to add their names to a petition that calls for the confirmation of the CFPB's first director.

The petition appears on the website for Warren's exploratory committee. She vows to send it to Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee; Republican senators are vowing to block the confirmation of any director unless the law is revised to make changes to the CFPB's structure.

Warren, a Democrat who came up with the concept for the CFPB while teaching at Harvard Law School, was hired by President Obama last year to set up the new bureau. After former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray was nominated to become the bureau's first director, she moved back to Massachusetts and began preparations for a 2012 Senate run.

If Warren runs and wins the Democratic nomination, her general-election opponent is likely to be incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown. Brown is not one of the 44 Republican senators who have said they would block any nominee to head the CFPB absent unless to the bureau's structure.

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Law and regulation
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