Washington -- Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn embodies many traits conservatives admire, including disdain for over-regulation and red ink.

So when the Oklahoma physician on Tuesday gave Richard Cordray, the nation’s top consumer finance cop, high praise, it stood as a sign that Republicans truly like the man.

They just hate his agency. And they made clear Tuesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that they have no intention of confirming Cordray for a full term as director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.

"I think you have done a wonderful job so far in carrying out your duties,” Coburn told Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general who is serving a temporary term as director of the fledgling consumer finance bureau.

Cordray, serving under a recess appointment that expires at the end of the year, will get a committee vote in coming weeks, and the hearing Tuesday was a formality preceding such a vote. Since Democrats outnumber Republicans, Cordray is certain to win the committee’s assent even if every Republican votes no.

But Republicans still can halt the nomination when the full Senate brings it up, because it takes 60 votes to cut off debate and take a final vote. Democrats only control 55 seats. The standoff could continue for months, with neither side motivated to compromise until they see if the U.S. Supreme Court acts on a related matter.

Also questioned at the hearing was Mary Jo White, nominated to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Democrats used the hearing to portray Republicans as the ones causing the problem with the CFPB, noting that Cordray’s powers and the oversight of his office were authorized by Congress in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. That bill created a single director to regulate the credit practices of banks and others.

The intent was to stop abuses by mortgage lenders, credit card issuers, student loan companies and others who were said to take advantage of consumers. Under the law, the president was to nominate a director to oversee the bureau, and the bureau’s budget would be overseen by the Federal Reserve Board.

Republicans disliked the agency’s creation, saying it had too much unchecked control over commerce. They refuse to confirm any director unless the CFPB’s leadership is turned into a five-member board, which they say would prevent a single leader from making extreme decisions. They also want Congress to get authority over its budget.

Answering Republicans’ questions on accountability and openness, Cordray said Tuesday that his bureau is subject to an outside independent audit as well as audits by the Government Accountability Office. It also is accountable to the Federal Reserve Board’s inspector general and congressional oversight, he said, with semi-annual reports to the Senate and House that result in “at minimum four testimonies per year.”

“I always am accountable to you,” he said. “I have found congressional oversight to be both vigorous and meaningful, and it keeps us in shape and it keeps us on our toes.”

Pressed by Republican Mike Johanns of Nebraska on whether he would open his agency’s spending to the questioning of a Senate Appropriations Committee panel, Cordray said the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee already have that kind of oversight.

“Senator, the bureau and I personally have testified regularly, I think more than 30 times in the last two years,” Cordray said. But he added that if there were things the bureau could do to make its finances more transparent to Johanns or his colleagues, “we could certainly consider those things.”

Johanns said that part of his concern was the roughly $150 million that the bureau spent on contracts and support services last year, or nearly half the money it got from the Federal Reserve. It was more than the bureau spent on personnel.

Cordray responded that “the reason we had so much money in contracts rather than personnel in our first year was that we did not exist as an agency before that. Much of the money was paid to the Treasury, which we were part of for the first year, and we contracted with them for services.” Over time, he said, “that is diminishing.”

Democrats including Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren said the GOP is holding Cordray’s nomination hostage as a way to water down the agency’s congressionally mandated mission.

“What I want to know is why, since the 1800s, have there been agencies all over Washington with a single director, including the SEC, but unlike the consumer agency, no one in the U.S. Senate has held up confirmation of their directors demanding that the agency be redesigned,” said Warren, who helped create the CFPB as a special Treasury Department advisor before running for the Senate.

“What I want to know is why every banking regulator since the Civil War has been funded outside the appropriations process, but unlike the consumer agency, no one in the United States Senate has held up confirmation of their directors demanding that that agency or those agencies be redesigned,” she continued.

She said that “from the way I see how other agencies are treated, I see nothing here but a filibuster threat against Director Cordray as an attempt to weaken the consumer agency. I think that the delay in getting him confirmed is bad for consumers, it’s bad for small banks, it’s bad for credit unions, it’s bad for anyone trying to offer an honest product in an honest market.”

Brown praised the job the bureau has done so far, saying that under Cordray it has refunded some $425 million to consumers "who were victim to fraudulent financial practices," and has handled more than 130,000 consumer complaints.

"Now is the time to consider Rich Cordray's qualifications, not keep fighting old battles," Brown said.

Cordray was first nominated in 2011 but Republicans used a procedural tactic to keep him from getting a full Senate confirmation vote. Obama then took the controversial step on Jan. 4, 2012 of putting Cordray in the job for a limited term -- through 2013 -- by making a recess appointment while Congress was on a holiday break. But hoping to keep him longer, Obama also renominated him for a full term on Jan. 24 this year.

The matter became messier just a day later, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Obama violated the Constitution with three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Though separate from Cordray’s temporary appointment, the circumstances were identical: Obama made the appointments at the same time, during a period when Congress purposely had not declared a recess. Critics of the appointments said the president had no right to determine when the legislative branch of government was and was not in actual recess.

If the labor board case is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, it could affect Cordray’s appointment as well, say some legal experts. An alternative would be for Cordray to win actual confirmation. But Republicans say that will not happen unless they get the changes they want.

Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat who chairs the banking committee, asked colleagues at the hearing, “What more can Richard Cordray do to deserve an up or down vote? I hope we can finally put aside politics and move forward with Richard Cordray's confirmation."

But Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who is the top Republican on the committee, said that “structural changes to the CFPB are essential. Moving from a single director to a board format is one of the important steps that will bring about transparency and openness.”

Their exchange was cordial, and Crapo, though a critic, noted that any structural changes will ultimately be resolved by the White House and Congress, not the agency's director. “But we look forward to trying to work with you to resolve those issues,” he told Cordray.