WASHINGTON – An angry group of Republican lawmakers decried President Obama’s recess appointment to direct the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and vowed this morning to challenge the controversial maneuver that bypassed the Senate’s confirmation process.
“The political maneuver of the President set up a constitutional crisis at a time when we can least afford it," Rep. Francisco Canseco, R-Texas, told new CFPB Director Richard Cordray during an oversight hearing this morning, indicating a court challenge of the appointment is in the offing.
“I find the method by which you were appointed highly offensive and in violation of the highest law in this land, the Constitution of the United States,” said Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., who called the appointment a “unilateral infringement of the constitutional powers of the Senate.”
It is unclear how the threat of litigation will affect the new bureau and its emerging role as consumer cop on the beat.
Faced with a promise by Republican senators to filibuster the appointment, President Obama named Cordray in January as a recess appointment, which enables him to serve without Senate confirmation until the end of the first year of the next Congress. The President made the recess appointment after 44 Republican senators pledged to block any nomination to head the consumer agency until the President and Democrats in Congress agreed to water down the new agency’s powers.
Republicans claim that the GOP political strategy to have a member of the Senate sit in Washington during traditional congressional holiday recesses, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, enables them to say it is not an official recess and effectively block any potential for the President to make a recess appointment.
In this morning’s hearing Rep. Spencer Bachus, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, criticized the President’s appointment. "The cause of greater accountability was not well-served by the President’s decision to circumvent the advice and consent of the Senate and install Mr. Cordray as the CFPB’s Director in a constitutionally questionable maneuver,” said the Alabama Republican. As I have told you previously, Mr. Cordray, I believe neither you nor the agency you head were well-served by that decision either, since it casts a legal cloud over the legitimacy of the Bureau’s regulatory and enforcement activity.”
