The panel voted 12-to-10 to approve Cordray’s nomination.

“We are simply seeking common-sense changes,” Mr. Shelby, the committee’s ranking minority member, said in a statement after the vote. “Today’s vote by the Senate Banking Committee was premature. No nominee for the director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection should receive consideration until the Democrats are ready to stop playing politics and work with us to make the bureau accountable. It’s their choice.”

According to the Associated Press, in remarks prepared for the hearing, Cordray said his experience as former Ohio attorney general taught him that litigation can be slow, costly, and unnecessarily acrimonious. He said he would use lawsuits “judiciously,” and noted that the bureau has other powers to resolve problems, including issuing rules, writing reports and examining large banks and many nonbank institutions.

In a bid to reach out to Republicans, Cordray also said that if confirmed, “I promise that you will have one person who will always be accountable to you for how we are carrying out the laws laid down by Congress and I will be eager to hear your thoughts about how we should do our work.”

Here’s a look at what’s on the docket for today’s hearing:

Panel 1

• Ms. Patricia M. Loui
  to be a Member of the Board of Directors
  Export-Import Bank of the United States, Hawaii
• Mr. Larry W. Walther
  to be a Member of the Board of Directors
  Export-Import Bank of the United States

Panel 2

• Honorable Richard Cordray
  to be Director
  Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection

American Banker is pulling out all the stops. Here are others that are expected to speak at the event: Martin Gruenberg, acting chairman of the FDIC; John Walsh, acting Comptroller of the Currency; Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee; Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee; and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who serves on the house financial services committee.

“This situation will continue until 2013,” said Mark Calabria, a former Republican staffer on the Senate Banking Committee who is now director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. “Republicans are unlikely to support anyone until all three of their changes are made. Just keeping the agency around is viewed as a major compromise.”

Calabria is referring to the structural changes that GOP leaders are calling for before they confirm anyone to lead the new consumer agency.

MSNBC’s Red Tape offers a more in-depth perspective on the nominee President Obama has picked to run the CFPB.

“He is as authentic as you can get.  He’s the same person when the cameras are on or when he’s with his family,” said Kimberly Kowalski, a former press aide for Cordray. “Sometimes it works to his detriment. He would just say what was in his heart, even if I’d prepared remarks for him … but Rich is all for that man on the street. If he meets someone and they tell him a problem, he remembers it, and he acts on it, and three months later, he’ll check to make sure it got fixed. Things never fall off his radar.”