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The last time Patrick McHenry, the Billy Zabka of the House Republican caucus, held a hearing with a member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it didn’t turn out too well. He called Elizabeth Warren a liar and generally tried to bully her, and received quite a backlash in the process.
So we’ll get a chance to see that play out again. McHenry has scheduled a new hearing on January 24 with Richard Cordray, the new director of the CFPB.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray has accepted an invitation to testify before a U.S. House oversight panel later this month, where he is likely to face tough questions about the president’s decision last week to bypass the Senate and install him as director.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R., N.C.), along with other congressional Republicans, were infuriated by the president’s Jan. 4 move. Mr. McHenry said the “unprecedented appointment of Mr. Cordray runs counter to the constitutional requirements for a recess appointment and Obama’s own campaign pledge to run ‘the most transparent administration in history.’”
Mr. McHenry, who heads a financial services subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Mr. Cordray, calling on him to testify on Jan. 24.
McHenry will surely approach this hearing with the same professional attitude that characterized the Warren grilling. So Cordray should prepare by watching ritual asceticism videos.
When not going up to Capitol Hill to get yelled at, Cordray will be in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Civil Rights Institute, presiding over a field hearing on payday lenders, which have a large frequency in the state. It will be the first field hearing for the young agency, and that will happen next Thursday.
Presumably the January 24 hearing will coincide with the House Republican huffing and puffing over the recess appointment, over the contention that Congress isn’t technically in recess. And those Republicans will get right on that, just as soon as they finish their vacations and spend some quality time with their couches.
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Popcorn time!
Never mind. O will figure out a way of getting rid of Cordray ASAP. If it takes a R thug, so be it. McHenry is unembarrassable.
On edit: Cordray will be gone right after election.
Give him McLiberty or give him McDeath. Oh, and let me have a McMuffin with that.
He’s well compensated for his unembarrassability.
Cordray is starting with a good issue – Montanans limited the rate of interest pay day loan companies could charge in the last election and they have all closed up shop and left the state. YAY
Wonder if that’s why the persistent closeted-gay rumors about him never seem to make it very far into the establishment media?
Unlike the turkey vultures in Alabama, the payday vultures prey on live specimens.
Jack Kemp’s dalliances with men (boys?; gay bars charged on his amex is the firmest rumor I heard) never saw the light of day.
But wait!
McHenry has an understanding with the Lord. Move along.
What do vultures live off of when all their prey are gone.
Each other just like the R candidates are doing right now. It’s a jungle out there !!
Yeah. Ya beat me to it. I was going to type: Work their way up the food chain.
The closeted, last living member of the Lollypop Kids.
“Cordray will be gone right after election.”
Gone like Brigadoon. Richard WHO? Cordray will be in the WH basement cleaning out closets with a toothbrush.
shouldn’t these rethug subcomitte chairmen be wearing SS uniforms by now ? between this guy and Darrel A Issa (A is for arsonist), their hearings are starting to look like something out of old WWII footage