Report: Obama to task Warren with starting consumer protection agency

President Obama will appoint Elizabeth Warren as his special counselor to start the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ABC News' Jake Tapper reports.

Tapper writes that naming Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who came up with the idea for the agency in 2007, as a special counselor to the Treasury Department means Obama can bypass a "Senate confirmation process that could prove lengthy and contentious." Congress watchers had suspected Obama would appoint Warren during congressional recess, to avoid debate.

Warren currently oversees the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and has long been considered the front-runner to head up the new agency.