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Politico tried to gin up some controversy about the Elizabeth Warren selection for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by wondering about “the delay,” and they won the morning enough to get a question about it into the President’s press conference. I would hesitate to go as far as Greg Sargent and suggest that Obama hinted at the appointment. First of all, meeting with her twice in the last month was a good enough hint. Second, the question was specifically about Warren. Third, Obama said nothing in the presser that he hasn’t already said about Warren – that she invented the concept of the CFPB, that he’s known her a long time and that she’s a dear friend. Parsing the word “official” in his line “I’m not going to make an official announcement until it’s ready” seems to me to not be worth the effort.
What a legitimate reporter would have asked is why the Treasury Department hasn’t named an acting director, which they can do without Senate confirmation. Instead, we heard this weird statement about “are you concerned she wouldn’t be able to get confirmed” when she doesn’t need to be to get started. I will say that Obama’s reply on that was pretty solid.
Concerned about her Senate confirmation? I’m concerned about all Senate confirmations these days. If I hire a dog catcher… I’ve got people who were voted out of committee unanimously and I can’t get a vote on. Judges, homeland security. Determined minority in the Senate insists on a 60-vote filibuster on everyone, even if after we break the filibuster, they get 90 votes. They’re just playing games. It’s time to stop.
The President could just recess appoint everyone, including judges, but those terms would run out pretty quickly. So banging on Republicans, which actually has succeeded in getting a large handful of nominees through, seems to be the alternative.
Point is, I wish we had a media that understood how Elizabeth Warren could be the acting director of the CFPB today.
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Just as the media, et al. need to question why Obama let Ms Johnson die the death of 1000 cuts, appoint Ms Warren, back Ms Warren, raise hell about the stonewalling, name names. Oh!, that’s right, he’d have to call himself on his act.
Is there an issue in terms of timing? Confirmation might be tough with this Senate, but impossible starting in January. My concern is that he will wait just long enough to kick it to the next Senate and then throw his hands in the air and say he tried.
“When your paycheck depends on not understanding, you choose to not understand.”
Exactly.
I remain skeptical that the law allows appointment of an acting director at this time. Section 1066 specifically assigns interim authority to the Treasury secretary.
Not to mention that Elizabeth Warren is possibly the most frightening human being on the planet from the perspective of those MOTU.
What’s too funny is watching Obama do his little maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t fandance…using Warren as the fan.
As a loyal progressive-slash-fuckinghippy, I am SOOOO fired up by it that I’ll probably vote TWICE!
“…then throw his hands in the air and say he tried.”
There’s going to be one hell of a lot of that coming down the “Yes, we can” turnpike.
Funny isn’t it, how the same people who insist they couldn’t see the financial meltdown coming, can see Elizabeth Warren coming and block every possible path to her appointment.
Even if O nominates Warren he won’t lift a finger to get her confirmed, much less install her via a recess appointment.
In an adminstration where any and all hints of populism are a sham, these recent suggestions of a Warren nomination might well be the most cynical and insincere to date.
Sorry to be so negative, but Warren accepting this position in this watered down “bureau” buried in the Fed will do nothing for her reputation or her career. If she accepts the position, I for one will believe NOTHING that comes out of her mouth ever again.
I think the reason we’re hearing this “chatter” on Warren not being confirm-able is because that’s how Rahm, Obama, Geithner and Summers want this played out. Oh, sure, Obama will meet with her and likely formally nominate her so he can throw us DFH’s a bone right before the election.
But a whispering campaign against her has started, and its designed to make her nomination a non-starter in committee and then the Senate. If this plays out like Dawn Johnson at OLC, don’t be surpirsed if she withdraws her nomination early next year.
More Kabuki You Can Believe In.
But…she’s just a sliver.
I’m telling you it’s just like Dawn Johnson. O doesn’t want the position filled so he’ll just let Warren dangle until she finally gives up. By then everyone will have forgotten that the position even exists and it will never be filled. (Was head of OLC ever named instead of Johnson, or is it still vacant? I checked their website last week, and it wasn’t clear.)
She’s so beautiful.
not even enough to make a thimbleful of weak soup (sigh)
she would totally rock as Director, kyeo… If they ever allow her to do anything to curb the banks. At this moment Geithner is appointing staff for the CFPB, and assuming she survives the confirmation process (which I doubt she will) she will face an entrenched bureaucracy that is hostile to any reforms she will attempt.
i think OLC Chief is still vacant, eCahn. Shocking isn’t it?
Too beautiful to be working for two ugly fuckers like Geithner and Bernanke.
i like to call them Timmeh! and Bubbles Jr… Ben, Son of Bubbles, also has a nice ring to it.
Phoenix Woman @ 1:30 PM
Ms. Warren can’t be “the most frightning human being on the planet” as that position has already been filled,by you!
[modnote: PW is a pussycat!]
The longer they wait to appoint Warren, the more time that Timmy G. will have to set up the bureau with his input and people. She will walk into a fait accompli to benefit Wall Street and the Summers/Rubin crowd.
Not at all. SOP for this prez.
I expect that to be the deal. He picks her, but in the meantime, they spay and neuter the agency with watered down rules and regs. If they do that after she takes over, I’d hope that she would resign. Getting it stuck to him is the only thing that this guy responds to.
Stop the presses!
We do have a media that understands how Elizabeth Warren could be acting director of the CFPB today. I really think you need to reflect on that seriously because it has implications for how progressives should proceed to enact change.
The agency budget is a percentage of the Fed Reserve budget – so treasury has the funds – and in the section you note it can hire staff right now for the agency. One of those staff would “lead” the agency until a nominee is confirmed.
The only difference is that Tim would have “boss” authority rather the authority that is given by the law for after the fact review of regulations put out by the head of the agency.
You are right – in terms of authority it is not the same job – but regulations would be issued, and staff hired, and initial direction of the agency set – by the interim head.
But can Elizabeth Warren be the interim leader, as David suggests?
(From Rising Hegemony via The Sideshow)
“One member of the DLC’s executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively–meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.”
One more piece of the puzzle falls into place: Koch Industries and a couple of Koch executives are behind the DLC. Rahm Emanuel once headed the DLC. He rubbed shoulders with these conservative Koch kooks. Koch Industries, with its John Birch Society background, infiltrated the Democratic Party through the DLC within years after one of the Koch brothers failed in his Libertarian Party bid, basically, it appears, to turn the Democratic Party into a weak-sister conservative branch of the Republican Party.
Thus, all the Blue Dog Democrat conservative candidates over the years, literally driving a wedge between the Democratic Party and labor unions, undercutting the traditional liberal progressive policies of the Democratic Party, strengthening the wing-nut Republican Party in the process. I had not realized that the vast right-wing conspiracy was so vast, so pervasive, so evil, and so dangerous to our democracy.
It will take more than God to save America from this kind of conservative evil. And we shouldn’t look to the Obama administration. It has too many close connections to the John Birch Society-tainted Koch Industries-infiltrated DLC. Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Protection Agency, even if a recess appointment is necessary? Not if the Koch-controlled DLCers have their way.
And so many other moves by President Obama now make sense in light of this new information about the DLC-Koch connection. The response to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster afterward, as well as the Obama administration leaving so many industry-friendly Koch-types in place at MMSA beforehand. Not prosecuting former Bush/Cheney officials for crimes they committed. The relatively weak healthcare reform bill, with no public option or universal single payer making it past the DLC-Koch formulative stage. The Obama administration keeping in place, and defending, some of the most anti-American policies of the previous Republican administration, keeping alive the “unitary executive” abomination for the next Republican president to exploit. President Obama appears to be up to his neck in Koch.
“Point is, I wish we had a media that understood how Elizabeth Warren could be the acting director of the CFPB today.”
Much better would be a President who WANTED her to be the acting director today and the official director as soon as possible. It’s extremely clear Timmy doesn’t want her, and clear enough that Obama doesn’t want her either. He’s just hoping we’ll all get distracted from this so he can appoint an ineffectual nobody, on the quiet.
Obama is not the worst President we’ve had, but he IS the biggest disappointment. After Dubya, we really needed a good or even great President to fix the messes he left us with. Instead we got Obama.