Last year, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) sent the President a letter raising concerns about 191 pending regulations that costs American business billions of dollars a year.   The President ignored the letter, so Speaker Boehner sent him another one.  The potential cost of these Obama regulations will be devastating to an already sputtering economy and constitute a massive hidden tax on all Americans.

The only way for Senators to stop regulations in the short term is to block the work of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  This bureau will be a regulation creating machine and an entity that will slow economic growth — much like Obama’s 191 pending regulations.  The only way for Senators to stop the bureau from mass producing new regulations is to refuse confirmation of the president’s nominee to head the Bureau, Richard Cordray.

The CFPB was created as a super-regulatory agency empowered to regulate every financial transaction in America. It lacks any real checks and balances and would be headed by a bureaucrat who cannot be fired even if voters fire President Obama next November. As structured, confirmation of Cordray would embed a liberal regulator to head the agency for years to come.

Senate Republicans have pledged to block any nominee to head the agency until they get structural changes that would provide oversight and accountability at the CFPB.  The bureau can’t start the work of crafting a new swath of regulations until Cordray is confirmed.  That is why Senators only remaining tool to block the bureau is for Senators to hold up this controversial nomination.

Democrats are pressing forward on a confirmation hearing on Cordray for early September. To date Senate Democrats and the President have ignored the suggested structural changes demanded by Republicans.  Cordray has been marketed as a compromise candidate after Obama’s first pick to head the CFPB, Elizabeth Warren stepped aside. The marketing of Cordray as a moderate compromise candidate is targeted to moderate Republicans who have promised to support a filibuster.  Expect supporters of Cordray to use the media as a means to bully moderate Republicans to back down from the filibuster threat.

The fact of the matter is that Cordray’s resume is no less liberal than Warren. Some worry that he may be more liberal than Warren. Cordray is a trail lawyer who allied himself with Ohio trial lawyers on issues as Attorney General of Ohio.  He has said that he views the CFPB as a means to continue his activism in going after business in Ohio.

Think young Ralph Nader and you have a good picture of Cordray.  The economy cannot afford to allow this CFPB to go forward unreformed.  Furthermore, the Senate needs to make sure that any head of this new regulatory bureau is not likely to declare was with Wall Street.  Conservatives in the Senate must remain steadfast in their fight to reign in the power of an agency that can single-handedly destroy thousands of jobs.

Conservatives need to refuse confirmation of any nominee until they get satisfaction that the CFPB is not granted unlimited power to regulate private enterprise.  Senators may also want to refuse confirmation pending the demand that all 191 new Obama regulations are addressed to the satisfaction of Speaker Boehner.