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

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.”

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The Cordray bid… is likely to face a contentious battle in the Senate, where Republicans have vowed to block the nomination unless the White House agrees to revamp the bureau’s structure. Republicans want the bureau to be run by a commission instead of a single director, among other things. They fear that the bureau has broad powers over the financial industry without much congressional scrutiny and oversight.