Senate approves new CFPB director

NEW YORK» In a partyline vote, the Senate approved President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday, ending a sixmonth, highly partisan battle over the fate of the powerful consumer watchdog agency.

The vote was 50-49 in favor of approving Kathy Kraninger, who worked as a mid-level official in the White House’s budget office, to a five-year term. Kraninger has zero experience in financial services and had never run a federal agency before, a criticism that made Democrats hostile to her nomination since day one.

The CFPB was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, the law that rewrote the financial rules and regulations governing banks following the 2008 financial crisis.

The CFPB was designed to be a highly independent agency tasked with going after wrongdoing by banks, credit card companies and other financial services companies.

The bureau has returned billions of dollars to consumers through its work.