The Senate on Thursday confirmed Rohit Chopra to a five-year term as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on a straight, party-line vote of 50-48.
Chopra, nominated to the bureau post in February by President Joe Biden (D), has been a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member since 2018. He was involved in the start-up of the CFPB in 2011 and has previously served as a bureau assistant director, overseeing the bureau’s student loan agenda, during the Obama administration and was student loan ombudsperson while there (in a post mandated by the law that established the agency itself, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.)
Chopra’s nomination was voted on by the Senate Banking Committee in March, action that ended in a stalemate, with a vote of 12 yeas and 12 nays. A motion to discharge the nomination from the committee cleared last week on a close, party-line vote of 49-48.
Thursday’s vote confirming Chopra’s nomination followed a vote taken earlier in the day to invoke cloture, avoiding a filibuster. That motion passed with the Senate evenly split and Vice President Kamala Harris (D) supplying a tie-breaking vote.
Now cleared to serve, Chopra is poised to fill the post that has been filled only in an acting capacity since January by Dave Uejio, who was named acting director upon the resignation of Kathy Kraninger.
Uejio has been with the CFPB since 2012 and has also served as the CFPB’s acting chief of staff, lead for talent acquisition, and chief strategy officer. Now, he is awaiting confirmation as an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).