Heated exchanges mar beginning of Warren hearing

By Theo Emery, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON – Elizabeth Warren, architect of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, faced another round of hostile questions from House Republicans this morning with a week to go until the bureau opens. But some of the sharpest exchanges came before the Harvard professor and bankruptcy expert even had a chance to speak.

In the opening minutes of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, Democrats accused the panel’s Republican leaders of wrong-headed priorities. Instead of again hauling Warren, whose bureau was created to help regular folks negotiate the maze of mortgage and finance products and protect their interests, before the committee, they should be investigating banks’ illegal foreclosures on the homes of service members on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats said.

After Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s top Democrat, proposed that the committee subpoena mortgage companies accused of those practices, confusion swamped the proceeding. John F. Tierney, a Salem Democrat, tried to make a point about parliamentary procedure, then, in frustration, said to chairman Darrell Issa of California: “What part of the English language don’t you understand?”

In an effort to settle the proceedings, the committee took a five-minute break, after which Issa promised a vote on Cummings’s motion by the end of the hearing. Stephen F. Lynch, a South Boston Democrat, tried to get Issa’s attention, but the chairman pointedly ignored him and swore in Warren.

Warren finally began her testimony – almost 30 minutes after the hearing’s scheduled start.

The tenor of the hearing actually improved with her appearance, and although there were a few pointed exchanges between Warren and Republicans, none sunk to the level of a May appearance, when GOP lawmaker Patrick McHenry of North Carolina accused her of being a liar about her schedule just before she departed.

Still, there was open skepticism today from Republicans such as Issa, who said he feared that the bureau will not be accountable to Congress or the public.

“This subagency, independent as it might be… could well become an agency that, while well intended, is not well understood or transparent to Congress or to the American people,” he said.

President Obama brought Warren into the administration as an adviser to the bureau created by the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Warren stood by the agency, telling lawmakers that the bureau will be on the frontlines protecting borrowers when it launches next week.

“More than half of our resources will go to supervision and enforcement of financial institutions, to make sure that there’s a cop on the beat and that everyone’s following the rules,” she said.