By Scott Orr 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officially opens July 21, assuming the consumer-protection duties of seven federal agencies and oversight of 19 federal statutes.

And as the agency prepares to assume its powers, banks and financial institutions also should be preparing to respond to their new regulatory master. The bottom line is, businesses are going to have to pay a price for compliance, including hiring staff and consultants to help them negotiate the laws’ many regulations.

But how the regulations will turn out and how aggressive the agency becomes are largely dependent on who President Obama selects to lead the fledgling bureau.

The CFPB remains controversial, with Republicans in Congress doing everything they can to strip it of its powers. Last month, for example, the House Appropriations Committee voted 27-21 in favor of a measure to limit the bureau’s budget.

In a May 5 letter, 44 GOP senators demanded that the bureau be headed by a board of directors rather than a single director, that it be funded by congressional appropriations rather than the Federal Reserve and that banks gain protection against over-regulation.

The nomination of an agency head, which must be approved by the Senate, is expected to bring tensions to a boil.

Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor and special advisor to the president who has been setting up the bureau, is among the leading candidates to be its first director. She is also a lightning rod for attack from the bureau’s opponents.

"We are an agency that was born with enemies — with those who don't want us to exist, who don't want us to be strong, who don't want us to be independent," Warren said at a recent town hall meeting hosted by Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings in Baltimore.

Warren has been attacked mercilessly by Republicans, including being called a liar by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs.

Political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader criticized President Obama in an open letter for failing to act sooner to give Warren the job through a recess appointment, which would by-pass the Senate confirmation process.

“Not giving Elizabeth Warren a recess appointment to head the CFPB that she is now building at her post in the Treasury Department, will produce many stay-at-home voters. These are the Americans for whom over three years of dashed hopes in many fields view abandoning the authentically admired Professor Warren as the last straw,” Nader wrote.