Marathon Pundit: Hypocrisy thick as Obama will use recess appointment while Senate is not in recess

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Hypocrisy thick as Obama will use recess appointment while Senate is not in recess

Ah, yes, the audacity of President Obama. From AP:

In a defiant display of executive power, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will buck GOP opposition and name Richard Cordray as the nation's chief consumer watchdog. Outraged Republican leaders in Congress suggested that courts would determine the appointment was illegal.

With a director in place, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can start overseeing the mortgage companies, payday lenders, debt collectors and other financial companies often blamed for practices that helped tank the economy.

The president planned to highlight just that point during his announcement later Wednesday in Ohio that he was putting Cordray in the job.

It seems certain to raise the level of confrontational politics for a president seeking re-election by championing the middle class. Acting right after Tuesday's GOP presidential caucuses in Iowa, Obama is seeking to grab attention with his most brazen leap-frog over Congress and show that criticism won't slow him.

While Cordray is a Democrat, the former Ohio attorney general isn't a left-wing radical along the lines of labor lawyer Craig Becker, whom Obama placed on the National Labor Relations Board after being rejected by the Senate, as Cordray was. But Republicans have issues with the director position of the CFPB. And there is much to dislike: the bureau, which is a creation of the controversial Dodd-Frank bill, in an unaccountable monster.

During the George W. Bush administration, numerous Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, defended recess appointments. After Bush used a recess appointment to name John Bolton as our ambassador to the United Nations, then-Sen. Obama called it "the wrong thing to do." The Workforce Fairness Institute issued a statement about the upcoming appointment:

"According to news reports, administration lawyers believe President Obama has the legal authority to name Richard Cordray head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) through a recess appointment. Does that mean Obama is also prepared to make other recess appointments, such as Richard Griffin and Sharon Block to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)? That would be more payback to Big Labor masquerading as an effort to protect consumers," said Fred Wszolek, spokesperson for the Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI). "Workers and small businesses will not be fooled and understand, above all else, Obama is concerned with rewarding union bosses – his top campaign contributor – at the expense of jobs. Griffin and Block would simply replace labor radical Craig Becker and former chairman and union partisan Wilma Liebman. Jamming pro-union and anti-business nominees down the throats of American employers and completely ignoring the role of the Senate in the nomination process demonstrates this White House's rhetoric on our nation's economic recovery is complete hypocrisy and the executive branch is controlled by labor bosses."

Oh, the Senate is in pro-forma session in place with the goal of preventing such recess appointments.

Obama once taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. My sympathies to his students.

Tom Donahue, the president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, attacked the notion of the CPFB earlier today:

The U.S. Chamber praised the Senate for refusing to confirm Richard Cordray as the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Senators opposing the nomination got it right—this isn’t about Cordray’s credentials but, rather, about preventing a deeply flawed agency from moving forward without substantial reforms.

Perhaps unwilling to take no for an answer, President Obama reportedly may circumvent the Senate confirmation process altogether by appointing Cordray during recess. This would undermine the collaboration needed to fix our economy and modernize the financial system. It would also take away the only real check Congress has over the bureau's enormous power—the confirmation of its director. And an unreformed, unaccountable CFPB would threaten our recovery at the worst possible time.

We should root out the predatory lending, financial scams, and fraud that poison a competitive marketplace and harm consumers and legitimate businesses. But what's also important—to economic growth and job creation and to borrowers and businesses acting in good faith—is the availability of credit and capital. The current structure of the CFPB will breed uncertainty, restrict credit, and stifle innovation when we need it most.

The fixes are obvious and necessary. First, the CFPB is exempt from nearly all the checks and balances that keep other independent regulatory bodies, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, transparent and accountable. The CFPB is led by a single, powerful director—the agency’s only Senate-approved position. Its top post carries a five-year term, and the director can’t be fired, even by the president, outside of extraordinary circumstances. The CFPB's power should be decentralized through a bipartisan panel of commissioners, ensuring balanced debate and a diversity of viewpoints.