Congressmen Add Insult to Oversight at Committee Hearing

ABC News' Amy Bingham and Zach Wolf report:

Committee members added insults to oversight at a House hearing today where congressmen talked over each other, demanded demanded answers from Elizabeth Warren of the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and shot snide remarks across the aisle.

Things were heated from the very beginning when a dispute over parliamentary procedure caused Rep. John Tierney, D- Mass., to ask Chairman Darrell Issa, R- Calif., “What part of the English language here don't you understand?”

After nearly two hours of questioning, Rep. Jim Cooper, D- Tenn., had had enough. 

"Some of us come here and we get so used to the food fight that we want it to continue. And you'll probably score brownie points if you make your partisan hit. You might even get on a better committee," he said. "Well, congratulations. You will not have solved a problem."

The intention of the hearing was to determine how the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will regulate financial products and prohibit those it considers unfair and abusive. This is the third time Warren has weathered the committee’s questioning about the bureau.

Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., was intent to find out whether the bureau planned to actually ban products and seemed unsatisfied with Warren’s response. Ross co-sponsored a bill to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act which created the protection bureau.

The bureau has "a power to ban, to stop the marketing of a certain product,” Ross said. “Don’t you think, though, that should be something that you and your team are addressing as you go into your first year next year?”

“Congressman, I appreciate the advice, but actually no,” Warren responded.

“So it would be OK then that we just revoke the power?” Ross shot back, softening his question by saying “Believe me I'm being very respectful ma'am I'm from the South.”

Warren, who was appointed to help get the CPB up and running in large part because lawmakers and the White House doubted she could get the 60 votes needed for an official appointment to lead it, has become something of a cause celebre for liberals and a bogeywoman for conservatives.

She was appointed  by President Obama in September to form the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that was her brainchild.

Read more about Elizabeth Warren’s appointment to the position. 

This is not her first grilling before Congress. In May, after assuming her position helping create the Consumer Protection Bureau, she sparred with Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, about everything from whether the new bureau would affect credit rates to when she could leave the hearing.

Read more here about that testimony. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created as part of the Wall Street overhaul bill passed through Congress by Democrats last year. Republicans, now in the majority in the House of Representatives and with more votes in the Senate, have tried to scale back the agency, which is slated to officially open later this month even though it does not currently have a director.

Warren appeared frequently before Congress in her previous role as head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with being a watchdog of the 2008 Wall Street Bailout.