Consumer Law & Policy Blog

Former CPSC Chair Endorses Elizabeth Warren

There's been a ton of coverage lately speculating about whether Elizabeth Warren will get the CFPB nod, and arguing the case for or against.  Amid that chatter, a piece by former CPSC chair Ann Brown stands out as particularly compelling:

When I took the job of chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the 1990’s, I’d never administered a large staff. I’d never run an agency, a corporation or any large institution.

I had, however, been a children’s safety advocate and consumer specialist for years, and I’d been a close outside observer of the commission. I knew its inner workings like the back of my hand, and I anticipated issues we would address and knew how we should address them.

During my confirmation hearing, not a single senator asked me about my “lack of administrative experience.” For that matter, I am sure that countless other agency heads and cabinet officials – including ones still on the job – also skirted those sorts of questions, even though they had similar backgrounds.

This has me thinking: Why is it that officials and pundits who don’t support Elizabeth Warren’s nomination as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have taken to questioning her qualifications?

Having run a large, highly visible consumer agency, I know first-hand that Warren has the right experience to succeed. She is likely to bring visibility to the agency as its first director – the sort of visibility that can allow it to build public confidence, insulate itself from industry capture, recruit first-rate career staff and build momentum for meaningful reform.

* * *   You may have noticed that bank lobbyists don’t tend to question the experience – administrative or otherwise – when one of their colleagues gets a government job. Nobody says that former bank lobbyists – like John Dugan, now head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency – lacked the necessary administrative experience.

The president is faced with an important decision in who to nominate as the first CFPB director. He ought to consider the real issues.

Brown's point about the importance of Warren's visibility and public credibility, and the way in which that could translate into getting the agency off on the right track, strikes me as the best argument I've seen for Warren's nomination.  You can read the full piece here.

Elizabeth Warren for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director

by Deepak Gupta

The debate over whether President Obama should name Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer financial protection agency -- an agency for which she provided the intellectual architecture, and that probably never would have been created without her  -- has taken on a surprisingly high profile over the past week, at times resembling an election campaign or Supreme Court nomination fight. 

On Friday, Felix Salmon went so far as to deem Warren's nomination a "foregone conclusion." And the latest signs, including positive comments today from Robert Gibbs and a steady stream of endorsements in the Senate, do suggest that Warren's appointment has become increasingly likely. One key indicator is that Gibbs described her not only as a "terrific candidate" but also as "very confirmable." (Interviewed a few days ago on Good Morning America, Obama himself was more equivocal.)

Today, Public Citizen endorsed Warren's candidacy and rolled out an online petition for supporters to sign.  It's no secret that the contributors to this blog are, and have been, strong Warren supporters all along. As Jeff Sovern said last week, "I want the CFPB to be just like Elizabeth Warren. . . . We need an agency that bases its decisions on empirical realities rather than ideology. Just like Elizabeth Warren. And if that's what we want, shouldn't the CFPB be led by Elizabeth Warren?"  Over at Credit Slips, where Warren was once a contributor, her friends and academic colleagues have been posting some must-read commentary on her candidacy. Katie Porter describes Warren--the person, not the caricature--as someone who sincerely believes in markets and wants to make them function more efficiently. And Bob Lawless talks about Warren as someone whose thinking is grounded in facts and pragmatism, not ideology. Finally, Adam Levitin demolishes one of the baseless criticisms of Warren that's been making the rounds--that she lacks the necessary administrative skills. (By the way, does anyone really believe that her opponents' true concern is insufficient administrative experience?)

My own view is that Warren should be the nominee, but not primarily for the reasons cited above. The other top candidates, Michael Barr and Gene Kimmelman, are experienced and well-respected consumer advocates who could probably also be counted on to arrive at the elusive right mix of empirical realism, consumer protection, and flexibility. Both have more Washington experience than Warren does. Indeed, Barr has been the true architect of the financial reform legislation within the administration and would bring to the job considerable government experience together with a scholarly background on consumer financial protection issues. He would be a fine choice. That said, Warren stands out for two reasons: