Obama makes key appointments in a new faceoff with Congress

SHAKER HEIGHTS, OHIO - President Obama kicked off the election year aggressively, picking a fight with congressional Republicans by sidestepping the Senate to fill the top job at the government's newly created consumer protection bureau.

He also filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, which referees labor-management controversies -- a top priority of his allies in labor unions.

The appointments Wednesday, which had been stalled in the Senate, came as Obama moved to make confronting Congress a central part of his strategy for re-election. His job approval rating remains low, but Congress' standing is even lower. In a confrontation between the two, the president will have the upper hand, White House aides surmise.

In the case of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the White House hopes to portray Obama as standing up for middle-class families and Republicans as beholden to banks and mortgage companies.

Underscoring the political theme, aides hung a large blue banner proclaiming "We can't wait" in the high school gymnasium where Obama announced the appointment of Richard Cordray, Ohio's former attorney general, to head the bureau. It was Obama's 17th trip to Ohio, a major swing state in the upcoming presidential election.

Cordray's nomination has been blocked in the Senate since summer by a Republican filibuster, which Obama said had hurt consumers.

"Every day that we waited was another day when millions of Americans were left unprotected," he said. "Without a director in place, the consumer watchdog agency that we've set up doesn't have all the tools it needs to protect consumers against dishonest mortgage brokers or payday lenders and debt collectors who are taking advantage of consumers.

Republicans reacted furiously. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called Obama's move "an extraordinary and entirely unprecedented power grab."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that the president had acted "arrogantly" and that his decision "fundamentally endangers the Congress' role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch."

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the appointments "Chicago-style politics at its worst."

Obama made the appointments under his power to fill vacancies during a congressional recess. Republicans have been forcing the Senate into pro forma sessions much of the year to forestall precisely that move. They argue that Congress has not been on recess for more than three days at a time and that Obama's move broke a long-standing gentlemen's agreement over the use of recess appointments.

Democrats, under Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, sporadically used the same strategy of calling pro forma sessions to prevent President George W. Bush from making recess appointments. But the Republicans used the strategy throughout 2011 as the procedural arms race in Congress escalated.