Obama creates new consumer protection board — now he has to staff it – The Oval: Tracking the Obama presidency

President Obama has signed a new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection into law, but he will take some time before deciding who will lead it.

“I do not expect an imminent announcement on that,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Lawmakers who backed the new Wall Street regulation bill are touting Elizabeth Warren, the former Harvard law professor who came up with the idea of the consumer protection board in the first place.

Others wonder if Warren can win Senate confirmation. “There’s a serious question about it,” said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who helped write the new financial regulations, speaking on NPR.

Some conservatives say Warren — who currently chairs a federal bailout watchdog committee — may be too anti-business. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Warren’s confirmation prospects, saying he will wait to see who Obama nominates.

“If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t have created that agency in the first place,” McConnell said. “It will be a massive bureaucracy.”

Gibbs said Warren is one of the names under consideration.

After all, the new bureau is something that Warren “thought should be put in place to ensure that consumers were on equal footing with big banks,” Gibbs said, adding that she would be “a terrific nominee.”

“I have seen comments by those that questioned whether she could be confirmed,” Gibbs said. “And I don’t agree with those at all.”

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