Watchdog pick makes debut in nomination

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the federal consumer watchdog agency faced some hostile questioning from GOP Senators on Tuesday, but appeared to be likely to be confirmed with Democrats controlling a majority in the Senate.

Rohit Chopra, currently a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, would be the third permanent director of the decade-old agency. President Donald Trump’s director of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger, was asked to resign by Biden on the first day of his term.

Chopra said he planned to “work with (senators) to build a new bipartisan consensus” for the bureau.

Chopra would inherit an agency that’s a shell of its former self in the aftermath of the Trump administration. The CFPB drastically scaled back its enforcement actions,, and it relegated concerns like fair lending to a much smaller position inside the bureau.

He said, if confirmed, he would likely return the bureau to aggressively fine and penalize companies for bad behaviors.

“Economically it does not make sense that you rip someone off and don’t have to pay a penalty for it,” Chopra told senators. “Restitution is a critical part of the CFPB’s work.”

The CFPB was created following the housing bubble and financial crisis of the late 2000s.

Chopra