January 15, 2012
Responding to GOP inquiry, the Justice Department in a legal memo validated President Obama’s recent recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Washington Post reports the Justice Department declared the President’s CFPB move constitutional, because the pro-forma Senate sessions – some only a few seconds in duration – did not count as true sessions that as a result could prevent such appointments.
“Those sessions do not interrupt the intrasession recess in a manner that would preclude the President from determining that the Senate remains unavailable throughout to ‘receive communications from the President or participate as a body in making appointments,’” wrote, Virginia A. Seitz, the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, in the memo regarding the Senate’s pro-forma sessions from Jan. 3-23.
The memo also rebuked GOP lawmakers for their use of the pro-forma sessions. Republican senators on two occasions requested that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) refuse to pass any resolution allowing the Senate to recess or adjourn for more than three days. Click here for more details.
Meanwhile, Cordray at his first news conference since becoming CFPB director stated that the bureau would be open to suggestions from lenders to limit the amount of data shared during the bank review process.
“If the banks want to get us listed in the statute, we would welcome that,” Cordray told reporters in Washington. “It would put this entirely at rest.”
Banks have expressed concern that the CFPB would distribute the data to state attorneys general. Click here to read the full article.
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