Portman Praises Cordray Confirmation, Seeks Accountability
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- U.S. Sen. Rob Portman says he's pleased the Senate has finally confirmed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but he and other senators continue to have concerns about accountability at the agency.
Cordray, formerly Ohio's attorney general and treasurer, received a recess appointment to the agency last year by President Obama after Senate Republicans balked at his appointment. Senators moved forward on the nomination as part of an agreement in which Democratic Senate leaders agreed to not make changes to filibuster rules.
“I do think we have to continue to try to improve the transparency and accountability of this agency,” Portman, R-Ohio, told reporters during his weekly conference call Thursday. He was among the Senate Republicans who joined Democrats to vote to end cloture and in favor of Cordray’s appointment.
For two years, Republican senators refused to give Cordray 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 in remarks following the Senate vote. He thanked senators from both parties for working together to advance the nomination.
Following Tuesday’s vote to confirm Cordray, U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who also voted to approve the appointment, acknowledged that he and his fellow Republicans had blocked the appointment because they didn’t like the law that established the bureau, the Dodd-Frank Act.
“That’s not a reason to deny someone their appointment. We were wrong,” he told The New York Times.
Graham was one of several senators who signed a letter saying they would not move forward with the nomination unless “certain things were done,” including making CFPB’s budget subject to the congressional appropriations process, restructuring the agency as a commission and having a more rigorous review of regulations, Portman said.
Portman said he, too, signed the letter before Cordray was among the potential nominees but not when it came up again earlier this year because he thought Cordray “deserved a shot” and he tried to broker an agreement with Graham and other Republicans to provide enough voted to get through cloture.
“Throughout this process my goal was to try to find middle ground between Senate Republicans, where all but two of us were, Bob Corker and myself, and the White House and Treasury and Senate Democrats,” Portman said. “We were making some really good progress on it and then it got tied up into this bigger issue of the ‘nuclear option.’ ” Cordray ultimately got confirmed with some commitments toward accountability “but frankly not nearly what was in that letter,” he added.
“But at the end of the day there are deep concerns about CFBP and those continue,” he remarked. “People on our side of the aisle particularly” and many in the private sector believe the agency has “tremendous impact on our lives” regarding financial transactions “without the normal accountability that you would get,” he said.
“Other financial regulators have either a board or commission where they are appropriated funds through Congress, where they have other transparencies that the CFPB does not have,” he continued. “I will also continue to promote efforts legislatively to try to improve the law so we do have more transparency and accountability in that agency because it is incredibly powerful.”
Portman reported he has received “good feedback” from Democrats on Capitol Hill and the White House regarding some of the “common sense reforms” he has proposed, including the establishment of an inspector general. An IG would provide oversight to the agency as it collects “really unprecedented amounts of data” from consumers to ensure “we don’t have a problem as you’ve seen with other entities of the federal government,” including the National Security Agency and the Internal Revenue Service.
He introduced legislation to establish such oversight this week following the Cordray confirmation and has 10 cosponsors. “I’d be surprised if this won’t have a strong, bipartisan support behind it and I think we can get it done,” he said.
The IRS watchdog, he noted, came from legislation he authored while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998. “I don’t think we would have been talking about what happened in the Cincinnati office nor would we have been able to shut that down if we had not had an effective IG who is independent, looks at this stuff and keeps the agency's feet to the fire,” he said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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