WASHINGTON The Senate agreed this morning to allow a vote on Richard Cordray to be permanent director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, virtually ensuring Cordray’s confirmation to the five-year job and averting what some saw as a constitutional crisis over Republicans’ growing use of the filibuster.
The move to vote on Cordray’s nomination—which required 60 Senate votes—came after Democrats and Republicans negotiated an agreement to move the long-stalled CFPB nomination in order to stop the Democratic majority from changing the rules to block filibusters on all presidential nominees, something the Republicans have done at an unprecedented rate.
Separately, the Senate Banking Committee delayed a vote on NCUA nominee Richard Metsger and several others, while the Senate was engaged in the fight over the disputed Obama nominations.
As part of the Senate compromise President Obama has agreed to submit two new nominees for the National Labor Relations Board to replace the two nominees who were also the focus of Republican filibusters.
The proposed Democratic rules change was being called the nuclear option because it threatened to blow up any remaining comity in the Senate, which has been fiercely divided along party lines.
Cordray is serving as an abbreviated recess appointment that expires at year-end because all 45 Republicans have refused to put his nomination to a vote—with which he would certainly be confirmed because of a Democrat majority in the Senate. The Republicans insisted they would not vote on the nomination of Cordray or any other candidate to direct the new consumer bureau until Democrats and President Obama agreed to their demands to change the structure and funding of the fledgling agency.
The Republicans, who opposed creation of the CFPB as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, have insisted that the structure of the agency be changed so that a five-person board--instead of a single director--head the bureau, and that Congress--instead of the Treasury Department--have direct funding authority over the CFPB.
"It's really kind of remarkable that Cordray's going to get confirmed without the really substantive structural changes to the CFPB that Republicans insisted on for months," said John McKechnie, a longtime credit union lobbyist. "It's sort of a sign that the Republicans got outfoxed."
