Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2012–2017)
In December 2010, Special Advisor to President Barack Obama Elizabeth Warren selected Cordray to lead the enforcement arm of the newly created United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), saying, "Richard Cordray has the vision and experience to help us build a team that ensures every lender in the marketplace is playing by the rules." In announcing his appointment to this position Cordray also said that he intended to run for statewide office in Ohio again in 2014. Cordray said his appointment gave him a chance to resume "in many ways doing on a 50-state basis the things I cared most about as a state attorney general, with a more robust and a more comprehensive authority".
On July 17, 2011, Cordray was selected as the head of the entire CFPB, but his nomination was immediately in jeopardy because 44 Senate Republicans had previously vowed to derail any nominee in order to push for a decentralized structure to the organization. This was part of a pattern of conflict between Republicans in the Senate and the Obama administration that had led to record numbers of blocked and failed nominations. Four days later, Senator Richard Shelby wrote an op-ed article for The Wall Street Journal affirming continued opposition (that went back to a May 5 letter to Obama) to a centralized structure and saying that, like the Securities Exchange Commission and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the CFPB should have an executive board. Politico interpreted Shelby's statements as making Cordray's nomination "dead on arrival". In October, as the nomination remained on hold, the National Association of Attorneys General endorsed Cordray. On December 8, 2011, the Senate failed to secure cloture on Cordray's nomination. The final vote was 53–45, with 50 out of 51 Democrats voting for cloture, and 45 out of 47 Republicans voting against.
In January 2012, Obama gave Cordray a recess appointment to the post, bypassing the Senate, which had been holding, over the holiday recess, pro forma sessions of the Senate (gaveling in and gaveling out minutes later, without any legislative business being conducted) in order to block Obama from making a recess appointment. The White House's position was that the Senate was effectively in recess, and therefore that Obama was empowered to make a recess appointment; this move was criticized by Republican senators, who argued that Congress had not officially been in recess, and that Obama did not have the authority to bypass Senate approval.
The recess appointment's validity was challenged in court, and in June 2014, in NLRB v. Noel Canning, the Supreme Court unanimously vacated recess appointments made while the Senate was in pro forma session, determining that the Senate was not in recess at the time of the appointments. This decision did not affect Cordray because, almost two years after the recess appointment, he had been confirmed by the Senate.
On January 24, 2013, Obama renominated Cordray as CFPB director. Senate Republicans opposed his nomination, but amid a July 2013 push by Senate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster for all executive-branch nominees, senators struck a deal to pave the way for a final, up-or-down vote. The Senate voted 71–29 on July 16, 2013, to invoke cloture on Cordray's nomination, and confirmed Cordray in a 66–34 vote the same day.
Under Cordray, the CFPB grew to be a 1,600-person agency, and he was called to testify before Congress more than 40 times. During his tenure, the CFPB developed new mortgage lending rules that are credited with bringing lasting stability to markets after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. The CFPB also implemented reforms to the credit card market that lowered consumer costs and promoted transparency by reducing hidden fees and charges. It imposed large fines on banks for credit card add-on fees and brought the first major enforcement action against Wells Fargo. While Cordray served as director, the CFPB returned nearly $12 billion in relief for 29 million consumers. In this position, he also served on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Board of Governors for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and as vice chair of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission.
Republican groups including American Rising Squared and Congressman Jeb Hensarling filed complaints that Cordray had violated the Hatch Act by considering a run for governor of Ohio while serving as the director of the CFPB, but the United States Office of Special Counsel cleared Cordray of any wrongdoing.
Cordray has said that after President Trump was inaugurated, Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney worked to undermine Cordray and the CFPB. On November 15, 2017, Cordray announced his resignation as director of the CFPB, sparking a legal dispute over who would succeed him as acting director.
