As mentioned earlier, the President will make a recess appointment today for Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, opening up the bureau to regulate non-bank financial institutions and giving the new agency its first leader. This is a bold move by the President, and to put it in context, it’s important to [...]

When I saw President Obama miss his chance to use the “Roosevelt precedent” to appoint Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or make any recess appointment, I considered the matter closed. The other two options for Obama to recess-appoint would set new precedents for the Presidency, and I didn’t think he would [...]

During the recess, the President has a number of opportunities to make recess appointments. He could simply determine that the pro forma sessions being used to keep Congress active were insufficient to prevent recess appointments. He could use his Constitutional power to adjourn Congress. But both of those would fly in the face of recent [...]

The reason that it was so easy to pass the two-month stopgap today on the payroll tax and unemployment insurance and the doc fix is because the House and Senate set up pro forma sessions throughout their holiday break, which extends into late January. These are designed to deny the President the ability to carry [...]

The recess appointment fight nominally only concerns Richard Cordray, the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans want to block his confirmation because they stop the agency from gaining regulatory powers over non-bank financial institutions if they remain without a director. So they’re using the nomination fight as a proxy to force changes [...]

As is typical at the end of the year, Harry Reid attempted to clear out a backlog of uncontroversial Presidential appointments before the holiday break. But Mitch McConnell would not allow it. He wanted assurances, instead, that the President would not seek out any recess appointments during the break, and he objected to moving the [...]

The Obama Administration, expecting that we’re in an age where the normal rules of politics apply and not an age of nullification, nominated two labor officials for open slots on the National Labor Relations Board. That board will see previous recess appointments expire at the end of the year, leaving it without a quorum and [...]

Describing the blockade of Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a form of nullification sounds accurate to me. Cordray is almost an afterthought to this issue. Republicans disagree with the concept of a federal agency that looks out for consumers. So they plan to stop any effort to staff the agency [...]

Making an obstructionism exacta today, Senate Republicans defeated the motion to proceed on a second payroll tax cut bill by a 50-48 count. The roll call is here. Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders crossed the aisle to vote with all the Republicans. Sanders opposes the measure because another year of payroll tax cuts threatens Social [...]

The Senate failed to secure cloture this morning on the nomination of Richard Cordray for director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The final vote was 53-45. There was some concern that some conservative Democrats would abandon Cordray as well, despite the impeccable credentials and bipartisan support among state Attorneys General. But that didn’t materialize. [...]

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled a prototype credit card agreement designed to ease understanding of obligations. The CFPB will test the statement with the Pentagon Federal Credit Union, one of the largest in the nation. Raj Date, the acting director of the CFPB, unveiled the draft in Cleveland today. It’s just two pages [...]