It has almost gone without notice that Republicans in Congress, at the behest of their corporate masters, are fighting a system of consumer protections from abusive practices by credit-card companies, banks, mortgage lenders and other financial institutions.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will oversee the protections, was created by Congress and written into law last year. But since then, Republicans have been demanding a do-over in order to rewrite the new law to make it more palatable to their sponsors in the financial industry.

They are using the same hostage-taking, extortion-like tactics to kill these consumer protections as they have been in the budget and deficit-ceiling debates. In this instance, they are putting holds on confirmation of Pres. Obama’s nominees to head the CFPB.

And they are succeeding. They have refused to confirm Elizabeth Warren as head of the agency. Warren, the Harvard professor who was appointed by the Senate to recommend reforms after the financial crash in 2008 and subsequently by the president to create the new agency, is one of the good guys in Washington. What Repubicans have done to her is a travesty.

In an interview on CNN yesterday, Wolf Blitzer asked Warren about the political attacks on her and the consumer protection agency by Republicans:

WARREN: You know, I’m going to say, I really don’t get it. The stuff I work on are things like how bad fine print is and how it is that credit agreements should not be written in language that ordinary folks can’t read and understand.

And why it shouldn’t take an army of folks, of lawyers to be able to interpret a mortgage agreement for you. I think that’s stuff, Democrats, Republicans all kinds of folks think are good things for hard works middle class Americans.

I really don’t get the part. What is the one thing I’ve done that makes me controversial? I think this is politics.

Warren is leaving the stage now, and there are many in Massachusetts who hope she will run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Scott Brown.

Transcript:

BLITZER: It was a very odd scene over at the White House today. President Obama announcing the man he’s chosen to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Also there, the woman who didn’t get the job. Just ahead, I’ll speak with Elizabeth Warren about the bureau she envisioned and the controversy preventing her running it.

Right now, let’s go to our White House Dan Lothian for some background. Elizabeth Warren once made it clear she was going to get the job. We all thought she was going to get the job. She was the obvious choice so what happened?

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That’s right. Well, you know, liberals really thought that she was the best person for the job saying that she was a fierce consumer advocate.

But Republicans did not like her. And after that, as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in an opinion piece today, the new agency has some enemies in Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LOTHIAN (voice-over): Last September, when President Obama unveiled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Rose Garden, he praised former Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren as the architect.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: She will help oversee all aspects of the bureau’s creation.

LOTHIAN: But back in the Rose Garden Monday, it was former Ohio attorney general and five-time “Jeopardy” winner – who got the nomination as director.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That’s why all his confirmation – all his answers at his confirmation hearings will be in the form of a question, that’s a joke.

LOTHIAN: But that confirmation hearing that the president joked about is one reason Cordray not Warren got the nod. Yes, the White House said he’s the right fit for the job, moving up from director of enforcement, but they didn’t discount threats from conservatives to block Warren if she had been nominated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Had there not been that stiff opposition, would she have been the person nominated?

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: You know, hypotheticals are hard to answer. As an observation of fact, the kind of opposition she engendered is clear. As another observation in fact, some Republican senators have a blanket opposition to the agency as it is.

LOTHIAN: More on that in a moment, but why didn’t conservatives like Warren? Some feared a heavy-handed approach to the financial industry, Wall Street in particular.

That opposition could have led to a nasty confirmation battle during a time when big money and every vote counts. But it’s unclear Cordray will have an easier rise because as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce points out it’s not about one name, but a position in bureau unaccountable to Congress.

DAVID HIRSCHMANN, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: The personality game is always easier follow, but the basic reality here is that we’ve added another huge powerful regulator on top of a system that everybody agrees was broken and haven’t decided how it’s going to all work together.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LOTHIAN: Now, the White House vows to fight to have Cordray confirmed. As for Warren, someone close to Warren tells CNN she’s expected to return to Harvard amidst speculation that she might be interested in running for that Senate seat now occupied by Senator Scott Brown. Wolf —

BLITZER: All right, Dan Lothian, thanks very much.

Joining us now from the White House is Elizabeth Warren. Thanks very much for coming in.

ELIZABETH WARREN, WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: It’s a pleasure to be here.

BLITZER: Why do you think you’re so controversial?

WARREN: You know, I’m going to say, I really don’t get it. The stuff I work on are things like how bad fine print is and how it is that credit agreements should not be written in language that ordinary folks can’t read and understand.

And why it shouldn’t take an army of folks, of lawyers to be able to interpret a mortgage agreement for you. I think that’s stuff, Democrats, Republicans all kinds of folks think are good things for hard works middle class Americans.

I really don’t get the part. What is the one thing I’ve done that makes me controversial? I think this is politics.

BLITZER: We’re going to go through some of those issues. All right, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, really your brain child, as the president of the United States himself said. How disappointed are you that he didn’t nominate you to head it? WARREN: Golly, not at all. What you really have to understand here is my job was to set this agency up and it was an enormous privilege to be able to do that. One of the people I recruited right from the beginning was Rich Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general — a guy with an incredibly impressive resume for standing tough and being smart.

And, this is a new time for the consumer agency. This is the week that it’s the one-year anniversary of first coming into existence. This is the week that we pick up a bunch of our new powers. And this the week that the president makes a nomination for someone to lead this agency going forward. That’s a good thing.

BLITZER: Senator Shelby, the Republican senator from Alabama, he issued a statement saying this, and I’ll read it to you. He says, “until President Obama addresses our concerns by supporting a few reasonable structural changes, we will not confirm anyone to lead it. No accountability, no confirmation.” Do you think the president will be ready to make those kinds of changes that Senator Shelby and others are asking that will allow Mr. Cordray to be confirmed?

WARREN: Let me be really clear. We started this fight two years ago. And Senator Shelby and others who were his allies did not want any consumer agency at all. And if it absolutely was the case politically that there had to be one, they wanted some weak agency that couldn’t get anything done. We had that fight, and then, we had a straight up vote on it. And in a straight up vote in the United States Senate just over a year ago, that side lost.

The side that carried the day is a good, strong agency. And here we stand a year later with the minority, the side that lost, saying, well, I don’t like how that came out. And so, I think I have the capacity to stick a stick in the spokes, unless, the majority will do what the minority wants it to. You know, that’s not how democracy works, and it’s not how this agency works. It’s just wrong.

BLITZER: I take it you don’t want any changes, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today came out with a tough statement saying, unless, there are these change, it’s a jobs killing bureau. An unaccountable agency, it says with broad enforcement powers, could do serious damage to the credit markets at a time when small business lending is still reeling. And they point out that most new jobs are created by small businesses. What do you want to say to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?

WARREN: You know, you can keep saying this. They’ve been saying it. They said it before the last set of votes. They say it now, but let’s just look at the reality. What have we started doing? How about our mortgage project? What we’ve done is we’ve taken a stack of incomprehensible mortgage forms, and we’ve said we want to get it down to one page. We put a prototype out there.

We’ve shared it with banks. We’ve shared it with mortgage brokers. We’ve shared it credit unions. We’ve shared it with consumers, and we have gotten praise back from everyone, from the American Enterprise Institute to the consumer Federation of America. They said wow, that really works. You can cut regulatory burdens at the same time that you can increase value for families.

That’s what we’re here doing day by day by day. What these guys want is to rip the arms and the legs off this agency before it can ever get started. That’s all this is about. They can say whatever words they want, but I understand what this fight really is.

BLITZER: Well, what they say they’d like to see it like the SEC, a commission as opposed to an agency, so it wouldn’t have the enormous power that it now has.

WARREN: So, it can have trouble in terms of doing investigations. No. When Congress voted for this a year ago, they put enormous restrictions on this agency. Unlike any other federal agency, this is an agency when we make a rule, we can actually be overruled by other federal agencies that exist nowhere else in government.

Unlike other federal banking regulators, we have caps on our funding and can’t determine our own funding levels. There are powerful restrictions on what we can do. What these guys want is not accountability. What they want is an agency that simply is too hamstrung to act.

BLITZER: Let’s talk about Elizabeth Warren’s political future. A lot of people want you to think about seriously running against Scott Brown for the United States Senate from Massachusetts where you live. Are you giving that serious thought right now?

WARREN: You know, I have to tell you, I’ve spent 14 hours a day on the work standing up this agency. It has been all absorbing. And now is the moment when I’m going to get to step away from that, and I’m going to get to take a little vacation with my grandchildren. We’re headed to Lego land. That’s my immediate future.

BLITZER: What about after you get some R&R from, you know, enjoy a little relaxation, would you then seriously consider challenging Senator Brown?

WARREN: I got to go home to Massachusetts. I got to get back in the house I’ve lived in for 15 years and settle in, and then, I’ll think about my future.

BLITZER: All right. We’ll stay in close touch and hear what you have to say. Good luck with the next challenge. Thanks very much for joining us.

WARREN: Thank you.

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