There's been a lot of hoopla and outrage over the withdrawal of Elizabeth Warren as a candidate to head the brand new Consumer Protection Agency, and I hate to be Captain Obvious, but the senate was never going to confirm her anyway.
They won't confirm the next nominee, Richard Cordray, either. Or the next one. Or the one after that. So sayeth, Mitch McConnell.
“I would remind [President Obama] that Senate Republicans still aren’t interested [in] approving anyone to the position until the president agrees to make this massive government bureaucracy more accountable and transparent to the American people,” McConnell announced on the Senate floor Monday.
He continued: “Back on May 5 of this year, 44 Republican Senators signed a letter to the president stating — quote — ‘We will not support the consideration of any nominee, regardless of party affiliation, to be the CFPB director until the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reformed.’”
“We have no doubt that without proper oversight, the CFPB will only multiply the kind of countless, burdensome regulations that are holding our economy back right now and that it will have countless unintended consequences for individuals and small businesses that constrict credit, stifle growth, and destroy jobs. That’s why everyone from florists to community bankers opposed its creation in the first place. That’s why we’ll insist on serious reforms to bring accountability and transparency to the agency before we consider any nominee to run it.”
What Republican Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is really saying is that they will be happy to get out of the way and allow the confirmation of a director just as soon as the agency, which is still in its infancy, is rendered toothless and ineffectual.
He and his senate colleagues have no problem with government bureaucracy so long as that bureaucracy has no actual power.