The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sprung into action pretty decently since Richard Cordray was installed as director. CFPB has presented new, simple-to-read mortgage forms, and submitted a plan to regulate debt collection agencies and credit reporting bureaus. Today Cordray is in New York to discuss overdraft fees, a particularly egregious money-making scheme for banks and he’s inviting consumer feedback.

In his statement on the Administration’s new housing policies, CFPB Director Richard Cordray makes a fairly stunning response, considering it’s posted at the White House blog: “Documents were falsified,” which means criminal fraud. That raises concerns about how broad is the release from criminal liability contained in the proposed settlement.

The last time Patrick McHenry, the Billy Zabka of the House Republican caucus, held a hearing with a member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it didn’t turn out too well. He called Elizabeth Warren a liar and generally tried to bully her, and received quite a backlash in the process.

The correct way to stop problems caused by a perversion of Constitutional intent is not to lay on top of one absurd system another boundary-pushing interpretation of Constitutional power. The correct solution is to fix the root source of what is causing the problems to begin with. Unfortunately, though, that is not how President Obama is going to deal with Senate Republicans’ latest obstructionism to support existing law.

The CFPB has worked to bring clarity to mortgage, student loan and credit card statements with their “Know Before You Owe” program. But with the appointment of Cordray, now they get the full regulatory authorities of the agency.

The White House announced its lawyers view the President’s power to make recess appointments to be unfettered by GOP pro forma efforts to keep the Senate in session merely to obstruct the power to make appointments. This means the President may soon make other recess appointments, including to the National Labor Relations Board, which currently cannot operate because it lacks of quorum.

The President will make a recess appointment today for Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, opening up the bureau to regulate non-bank financial institutions and giving the new agency its first leader. This is a bold move by the President, and to put it in context, it’s important to understand it follows massive obstruction by GOP Senators.

President Obama missed his chance yesterday to use the “Roosevelt precedent” to appoint Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or make any recess appointment. But the Wall Street Journal reported that the President got legal clearance to basically ignore the pro forma sessions being held by Congress, enabling a recess appointment at any point in this holiday break.

During the recess, the President has a number of opportunities to make recess appointments. He could simply determine that the pro forma sessions being used to keep Congress active were insufficient to prevent recess appointments. He could use his Constitutional power to adjourn Congress. Or he could follow the Teddy Roosevelt precedent. But it appears he won’t.

As is typical at the end of the year, Harry Reid attempted to clear out a backlog of uncontroversial Presidential appointments before the holiday break. But Mitch McConnell would not allow it. He wanted assurances, instead, that the President would not seek out any recess appointments during the break, and he objected to moving the outstanding nominees until that time.

This may come as a surprise, since throughout this year Republicans have been able to use pro forma sessions to never take Congress into recess, thereby blocking recess appointments. Indeed, that was the plan for this holiday break as well.