WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama praised the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Wednesday, a day after the Senate acted on the long-stalled confirmation of the agency's director, Richard Cordray. Obama said the agency designed to protect consumers in their financial dealings can now work without a cloud over its head.
"Together we're giving Americans a guarantee that the protections they enjoy today will still be around next year, and the year after that, and the year after that and for years to come," Obama said at White House ceremony saluting Cordray's confirmation.
Creation of the bureau was one of the key features of a 2010 financial regulation law and it has long been a point of contention with Republicans.
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Cordray's confirmation and his swearing in by Vice President Biden Wednesday morning cap a drawn out fight between Obama on the one hand and the financial industry and GOP lawmakers on the other over the authority of the agency. Republicans have sought to alter the agency's structure and the means by which it is financed to give Congress greater control.
"For two years, Republicans in the Senate refused to give Rich a simple yes or no vote, not because they didn't think he was the right person for the job, but because they didn't like the law that set up the consumer watchdog in the first place," Obama said.
Obama last year placed Cordray in the job through an appointment when the Senate was not fully in session. Republicans have challenged the appointment arguing that the Senate was not officially in recess to permit Obama to act on his own.
Obama, noting that he took matters into his own hands, said Wednesday that "without a director in place the CFPB would have been severely hampered."
Cordray's confirmation was part of a deal in the Senate to dislodge a number of Obama nominations that had faced Republican opposition. The Senate voted 66-34 to confirm Cordray, the first in a series of votes planned this week on a total of seven Obama nominees to various Cabinet departments and agencies.
On Wednesday, the chamber planned to vote on Fred Hochberg to be president of the Export-Import Bank. Votes on Labor Secretary-designate Tom Perez and Gina McCarthy, Obama's choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, could also come by the end of the week.
The deal averted a pitched struggle over changing the Senate rules that give the minority party the right to block nominations with 60-vote thresholds instead of the 51-vote simple majority.
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