"President Barack Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio Wednesday to announce the recess appointment of the state’s former attorney general to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — and pick the first fight of the new year with congressional Republicans. Obama’s nomination of Richard Cordray to be the CFPB’s new director has been in limbo since it was filibustered in the Senate last month. But Obama said that “when Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.”
“I’m not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve,” he said in remarks that reflected the White House’s increasingly combative approach to Congress. Several hours later, Obama made more controversial recess appointments, filling three open seats on the National Labor Relations Board. The three appointees — Sharon Block, Terence Flynn and Richard Griffin — will take their place on a board that has been sharply attacked by Republicans for favoring labor. “The American people deserve to have qualified public servants fighting for them every day — whether it is to enforce new consumer protections or uphold the rights of working Americans,” Obama said in a White House statement announcing the NLRB appointments.
During his brief trip to Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Obama said the Republican opposition to Cordray, who, with Elizabeth Warren, helped design the CFPB and accompanied the president from Washington for the announcement of his appointment, had nothing to do with his qualifications. “The only reason Republicans in the Senate have blocked Richard is because they don’t agree with the law setting up the consumer watchdog,” Obama said. “They want to weaken it, water it down. … Well that makes no sense at all. Does anyone think the reason we got in such a financial mess, the worst, was because of too much oversight? Of course not.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71076.html
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