Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted Sunday that a House GOP proposal to extend the payroll tax cut will pass both the House and the Senate “on a bipartisan basis.”
McConnell and Graham also defended Senate Republicans’ filibuster to block a vote last week on Obama’s nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Wall Street oversight agency created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Republicans had wanted to condition Cordray’s installation on reforms that would put a multi-person board, not a single director, at its head and put Congress in charge of overseeing it.
“This new agency answers to no one, absolutely no one — another unelected czar,” McConnell said. “We’ve got a bunch of those in the White House. We don’t need any more of them.” He added that the problem lies not with Cordray but with the structure of the agency.
“It’s one individual who could bring down the banking system in this country if he chose to, has unlimited power,” McConnell said. “No one has that kind of power.”
Rep. Bill Cassidy has his blood drawn by Alesha Barbour during a free hepatitis screening in the Rayburn House Office Building hosted by the Congressional Viral Hepatitis Caucus to recognize "National Viral Hepatitis Testing Day."
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