WASHINGTON -- The Senate narrowly approved Thursday President Joe Biden's pick to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, giving the bureau a director who is likely to embrace an aggressive "watchdog" role, similar to how the agency operated under former President Barack Obama.
Rohit Chopra's nomination was approved 50-48, with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier having to cast a tie-breaking vote to end debate. Republicans were united in opposition to Chopra.
Before his approval, Chopra held one of the Democrat seats on the Federal Trade Commission, often using his position to publicly advocate for higher penalties and enforcement against companies found to have committed wrongdoing. A then GOP-controlled Senate unanimously confirmed Chopra to his FTC commissioner job in 2018, a point Democrats made during debates about his nomination when it became clear no Republican would vote to approve him this time.
Chopra, 39, was there at the bureau's beginnings, brought on by then-Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren to help launch the bureau. He held several high-ranking positions at the bureau during the Obama administration, including the top job handling student-loan issues.
"He is a terrific champion for consumers & will be a fearless leader of the Bureau. Let's get to work!," Warren, now a U.S. Senate Democrat from Massachusetts, tweeted after he was confirmed.
Chopra is the bureau's third permanent director since the bureau was created by the Dodd-Frank Act -- the law passed after the 2008 financial crisis that overhauled the entire banking and financial system. Kathy Kraninger, who was former President Donald Trump's choice to run the bureau, was asked to resign by Biden on his first day in office.
During the Trump administration, the bureau drastically scaled back its enforcement actions in number and size, and it relegated concerns, such as fair lending, to a much smaller position inside the bureau. It was a stark contrast to how the bureau was run under the Obama administration, when it aggressively collected fines from banks and credit card companies and returned billions of dollars in damages to borrowers.