Dodd Urging White House to Tap Bair as Head of New U.S. Consumer Bureau
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has urged the White House to nominate Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair as head of the new consumer bureau, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who helped write the legislation that creates the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, is backing Bair, a Republican, as the agency’s first leader because he questions whether Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren could garner the necessary 60 votes to be confirmed by the Senate, the people said.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who was one of three Republicans to vote in favor of the financial regulatory bill, also supports Bair for the consumer post, the people said.
Bair today declined through a spokesman to comment. She has previously said she is not interested in the job and expects to return to academia or engage in non-profit work when her term as FDIC chairman expires in June 2011.
The financial-overhaul law President Barack Obama signed on July 21 creates a consumer bureau at the Federal Reserve to police banks for mortgage and credit-card lending abuses.
Warren, chairman of the congressional panel overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has received public support for the consumer job from dozens of House Democrats, including Dodd’s counterpart, Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts. She also has been supported by leaders of consumer and union organizations. Financial industry groups have questioned whether her consumer crusading would make it difficult for her to negotiate fairly with businesses on regulatory matters.
‘Qualified’
Warren is “qualified, no question about it,” Dodd told reporters this week. “But the question is whether she’s confirmable.”
Bair, 56, who worked as an aide to then-Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, was appointed in 2006 by President George W. Bush to head the FDIC. She was among the first regulators to prod the mortgage industry to modify loans at risk of foreclosure to help borrowers keep their homes as losses mounted after the collapse of the subprime market.
Bair clashed with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, then the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, during the government’s efforts to stabilize the financial system in 2008.
White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki did not immediately return a request for comment.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net.
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