Barack Obama didn’t nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Scarborough is honest about that. After that he is dishonest about the reason why. Scarborough says that Obama is such a Wall Street chum that when the bankers said: don’t, Obama would have said: o.k. If Wall Street did control Obama, the CFPB never would have been implemented in Dodd-Frank and/or Obama would have vetoed it.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who pushed for Warren to be named the agency’s director, said she was not interested in the long-term appointment. Obama said Warren would “play a pivotal role” in helping him choose the agency’s director.
But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would not rule Warren out as a potential nominee for the position. He said Obama would nominate a director in the next several months.
Obama’s appointment of Warren was cheered by her supporters in Congress and at consumer and liberal groups that had pushed strongly for her to be the agency’s first director.
“This is the boldest step Obama’s taken so far to rein in the big Wall Street banks. And it’s a major victory for grass-roots progressives who rallied for Warren,” the liberal group MoveOn.org said in an e-mail to members titled “Victory!”
But some Republicans in Congress and business groups criticized Obama’s move. They said that the agency, with an annual budget of about $500 million, had broad power, and the confirmation process for the director is one of the only congressional checks.
Warren and the Obama administration were aware her appointment would be blocked by Senate GOP. I am sure she would have liked to have the job, but the point here is that she was able to start the CFPB as a special adviser to the president. Scarborough isn’t hearing any of these facts (start right before the 10m mark):
Obama didn’t nominate Warren because if she had been officially nominated, her nomination would have been blocked by 44 Republicans and 3 to 5 Wall Street friendly, Blue Dog Democrats also known by the title US Senator. . A recess appointment was in order? Well the Senate GOP blocked that too by staying in touch:
The Senate is technically staying in session – even though senators won’t be doing any business – over next week’s Memorial Day recess because Republicans want to prevent President Obama from making recess appointments, including the possible appointment of Elizabeth Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Congressional Republicans, with the backing of Wall Street, have fiercely opposed the appointment of consumer advocate and Harvard professor Warren to head the commission she helped create. GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) accused Warren of lying this week in one example of the aggressive criticism of Warren from the right.
via Senate GOP blocks possible Elizabeth Warren recess appointment – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.
Senator Chuck Schumer laid out the simple math:
“Well, the White House dropped consideration of Elizabeth Warren because the Republicans in the Senate said they will not let her pass. Period,” Schumer said. “Even were the President to try a recess appointment, they wouldn’t allow the Senate to recess. So the President was just facing reality when he said that he couldn’t nominate her because she never would have been approved. Forty-four senators I believe signed the letter; 44 Republican senators that wouldn’t allow her to come.”
via Schumer Says Obama ‘Just Facing Reality’ on Warren Nomination | PolitickerNY.
Warren would have been in a holding pattern and all of her work done while interim admin of the CFPB would have not been done. Later, as it was clear Senate conservatives would block Warren’s nomination no matter what, Obama did nominate a good candidate who was elected state wide in a swing state. Ohio AG Rich Cordray was supported by Republican lawmakers from his state. Which means he should be confirmed regardless of the senate’s make up, right? of course not:
Attorneys general from 37 states and U.S. territories urged senators to confirm the nomination of their former colleague, Richard Cordray, to be the first director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The nomination of Cordray, Ohio’s attorney general from 2009 to 2011, has been stalled in the Senate because of Republican demands for major changes in the structure of the agency. But the attorneys general — including eight Republicans — urged senators to vote for Cordray because he is “both brilliant and balanced.”
“Some of us may disagree with aspects of the Dodd-Frank legislation,” they wrote in a letter Tuesday on the letterhead of the National Assn. of Attorneys General. “But we are united in our belief that Mr. Cordray is very well qualified to carry out the responsibilities of this position.”
One of the Republicans who signed the letter, Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff, said it was important to get a director confirmed who could start working with states on mortgages and other key issues.
“We need Rich Cordray in there,” Shurtleff told reporters on a conference call organized by the White House. “He knows us, knows how to work with us.”
The Senate Banking Committee approved Cordray’s nomination this month on a 12-10 party line vote. This spring, nearly all Senate Republicans — enough to keep the nomination from moving forward — publicly vowed to block any nominee to head the agency unless the Obama administration agreed to water down its power by making some key changes.
via Consumer bureau nominee Richard Cordray backed by 37 state AGs – latimes.com.
Congressional Republicans don’t want the Obama Administration to have success. Period. Whether or not Obama’s policies are liberal or not is not the case. He literally has a congress that won’t allow him to fully staff the federal government. The failure of the American people to understand this falls upon media talking heads like Scarborough who drag exposition of their own ideological views in front of the political truth. In this case Scarborough confuses donations with prerogative : Obama has tried to staff the government to execute his strategy. The Republicans won’t let him staff the executive branch as a craven political tactic.