House Republicans this week passed a trio of bills aimed at reducing the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that was created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. These changes — including replacing the Bureau’s Director with a five-person commission — would strike at the heart of the Bureau’s independence.

Not to be outdone, Senate Republicans sent a letter to President Obama this week saying that they will not vote to confirm a Director for the Bureau — who is supposed to be in place by July 21 — unless several changes are made to the Bureau’s structure:

As presently organized, far too much power will be vested in the CFPB director without any effective checks and balances. Accordingly, we will not support the consideration of any nominee, regardless of party affiliation, to be the CFPB director until the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reformed.

For starters, the notion that the CFPB has some unprecedented amount of power is absurd. Plenty of agencies are run by a single director, and the CFPB’s rules can already be vetoed by a two-thirds vote of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is tasked with policing systemic risk in the financial system.

Interestingly enough, two of the letter’s signatories — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — voted for the Dodd-Frank law, complete with the CFPB in its current form. In fact, during the Dodd-Frank debate, Snowe helped Democrats defeat a Republican proposal that would have scrapped the CFPB in favor of a consumer protection council.

Both Snowe and Collins have been running to their right recently, with Snowe in particular tacking that way in anticipation of a 2012 primary challenger. Yesterday, in fact, Snowe blocked a small business bill that she authored, throwing a fit over not receiving a vote on an amendment she authored with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that would block federal agencies from implementing regulations. She had previously called for a “clean” version of the small business bill to be passed.

The practical upshot of Senate Republicans refusing to confirm a nominee is that President Obama will have no choice but to make a recess appointment. But not every Senate Republican appears to be on-board with the GOP push to kneecap the CFPB, as both Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) did not sign the letter to Obama.

Earlier this month, Senate Democrats tried and failed on three separate occasions to pass a tax extenders bill that included an extension of unemployment benefits that have currently expired. The problem, though, wasn’t that the bill lacked majority support, but that it was filibustered by Republicans who, along with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), refused to allow it to proceed to a final vote by defeating cloture motions.

Senate Democrats whittled the bill down to appease Republican concerns and subjected more and more of the bill to spending offsets, ultimately leaving just the jobless benefits extension unpaid for. But still, the Republicans refused to relent. However, one glimmer of potential hope remains for those counting on the Senate to take the belated but responsible step of extending benefits, as Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is advocating for a benefits-only bill, even saying that she’s okay with it adding to the deficit:

The hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans who are losing jobless benefits every week deserve our immediate attention, so I am writing today to urge you to bring a free-standing extension of unemployment insurance benefits to the Senate floor for a vote early next week. As of today, more than 1.2 million people out of work for longer than six months are ineligible for the next tier of extended benefits, which were originally provided by the economic stimulus bill to fight the recession.

It’s a pretty ugly spectacle to see Snowe call for paying “immediate attention” to a measure that she voted to filibuster not once, but three times. But, considering that 1.2 million people will have lost their benefits by the end of this week if something is not done and that 46 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or more, I suppose this is worth considering.

Of course, passing a stand-alone bill neglects all the other important provisions that were in the extenders bill, including COBRA subsidies to help laid-off workers purchase health insurance and aid to states to help them with their Medicaid bills. Failing to pass such measures is only going to add to the economic misery that Snowe at least seems aware is occurring.

Today, the House attempted to rush a bill consisting of nothing but a benefits extension through under a suspension of the rules, which means that a two-thirds majority of members was needed for it to pass. However, the House fell short on a 261-155 vote, meaning that the bill — which costs $33 billion — will have to be brought back under normal order if House Democrats wish to ultimately approve it.

When the Senate Banking Committee’s financial regulatory reform bill finally came up for a vote on the Senate floor, after the inevitable Republican filibuster was dispensed with, four Republicans cast their vote in support of the legislation — Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), Scott Brown (R-MA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Today, Brown said that he will vote against the final bill produced by the House-Senate conference committee (despite the inclusion of an special deal that he personally sought) because it imposes a $19 billion fee on the biggest financial firms to cover the cost of the law’s implementation. And now Snowe and Collins are singing a similar tune:

COLLINS: I’m not happy with the $19 billion new fee or tax that would be imposed. It was not part of either the House or Senate bill. It was added in the wee hours of the morning.

SNOWE: Well, obviously I’m concerned, anytime you’re placing taxes in the legislation that was not in the Senate bill. I’m going to have a discussion with Sen. Dodd on some of these issues.

It’s not only in the Senate that this tiny levy has become the object of scorn. “The imposition of a job-killing tax on large financial institutions to create a $19 billion slush fund to finance future bailouts is nothing short of bleeding this economy in the midst of the worse recession in 25 years,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN).

As Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out, “the fee is approximately equal to 0.01 percent of projected GDP over the next decade.” To derail legislation aimed at correcting the deficiencies that led to an economic meltdown because of a fee that will hardly be a blip on the radar of the biggest banks seems foolhardy, especially considering that Maine’s banking system is largely composed of smaller institutions that won’t be affected by the fee.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who chaired the financial reform conference committee, challenged the Republican hold-outs to find some other way to pay for the bill, if they don’t want to use a bank fee. “Do they want to add to the deficit?” he asked. “Is there another way? What’s their other way?”

As the Economist’s Ryan Avent put it, opposition to the fee also has implications for the debate over addressing the deficit. “The most moderate Republicans in the Senate are balking at the charge. Not because they disagree in any real sense with the economics of the fee. They simply won’t vote for anything that looks like a tax. This is why it’s so difficult to imagine a solution to America’s long-run budget crisis,” he wrote.