HUFFINGTON POST: Wall Street Journal report on Friday that Obama was not expected to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who was instrumental in setting up the agency but faced stalwart opposition from Republicans. Elizabeth Warren confirmed the news of Cordray’s nomination in a statement to The Huffington Post. “Rich has always had my strong support because he is tough and he is smart-and that’s exactly the combination this new agency needs,” she said. “He was one of the first senior leaders I recruited for the agency, and his work and commitment have made it clear that he will make a stellar director.” Progressives had long pushed for Obama to nominate Warren to lead the CFPB, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee expressed disappointment at the news that he would not do so. “With her track record of standing up to Wall Street and fighting for consumers, Elizabeth Warren was the best qualified to lead this bureau that she conceived — and we imagine Richard Cordray would agree,” PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a statement. “That said, Rich Cordray has been a strong ally of Elizabeth Warren’s and we hope he will continue
her legacy of holding Wall Street accountable.” President Obama thanked Warren on Sunday for helping to build the CFPB. “I also want to thank Elizabeth Warren not only for her extraordinary work standing up the new agency over the past year, but also for her many years of impassioned leadership, and her fierce defense of a simple idea: ordinary people deserve to be treated fairly and honestly in their financial dealings,” the president said. “This agency was Elizabeth’s idea, and through sheer force of will, intelligence, and a bottomless well of energy, she has made, and will continue to make, a profound and positive difference for our country.” MORE
RELATED: It seems that the hopes of Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren to lead the federal consumer protection agency she helped create are about to be dashed by stubborn Republican opposition. But she still has the energy, personality and Washington savvy to vie for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Scott Brown in November 2012. Some Washington Democratic insiders insist she is still mulling a Senate run, given her fading chances to be permanently confirmed to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which Warren pushed mightily and which she has been staffing up and directing as a special assistant to President Barack Obama. One such insider told me she has “done a grand job in getting the new agency” — which defends consumers against abuse by lending institutions — underway, but that it is unlikely she could get past Republican procedural barriers for confirmation. And a recess appointment by the president “would be such a flashpoint issue for the Republicans that it would make getting the bureau up and running more difficult.” Yet the word in Washington is that her winning battle to get the agency created, and her combat with the GOP, has given Warren a taste for politics and that she may get more deeply involved in it. That doesn’t necessarily mean a Senate run, but I’m told it is a possibility. MORE