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Thanks to the hard work done by Elizabeth Warren against strong opposition and overwhelming odds, and with the support of the Obama administration, consumers should soon have someone on their side when they're fighting consumer finance abuses:

Debt collectors and credit reporting companies are bracing for intense scrutiny after the government’s consumer finance watchdog unveiled a broad plan to regulate financial firms that have largely evaded federal oversight.

On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed regulations that would allow the agency to supervise those two controversial corners of the finance industry, which have drawn complaints of aggressive tactics and unfair practices.

The draft rule is the most significant proposal yet to emerge from the consumer agency — a symbol of the government’s new regulatory powers and a favorite target of Congressional Republicans — and the first of several efforts to police financial companies that are not banks.

“Debt collectors and credit reporting agencies have gone unsupervised by the federal government for too long,” Richard Cordray, the bureau’s director, told reporters on Thursday. “It is time to provide the kind of oversight of these markets that will help ensure that federal laws protecting consumers in these financial markets are being followed.”

The proposal now enters a 60-day comment period. The bureau expects to complete the rule by July, the two-year anniversary of its creation. The rule, like many of the bureau’s actions, could become bogged down in a larger political battle that has bedeviled many regulators in the Obama administration. Republicans have threatened to rein in the consumer agency’s budget and authority.

The bureau, a product of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, has a broad mandate to police Wall Street banks as well as the more shadowy corners of the financial industry. Such firms are unmarked territory for the federal government. Until now, state authorities largely have licensed and supervised these companies.