WASHINGTON — Even as House Republicans bludgeoned Wells Fargo chairman John Stumpf for more than three hours Thursday, he wasn’t their only target.

They also attacked the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for not acting more quickly against the bank for opening accounts and applying for credit cards on behalf of more than 2 million customers without their knowledge.

“Perhaps federal regulators deserve a pat on the back, or perhaps they deserve a swift kick in the backside,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.

The Republican’s attacks show how the Wells Fargo case has reignited a political fight over a watchdog agency created in 2011, in the wake of the Wall Street financial scandals.

The issue has also flared in at least one key Senate race, between Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Penn., and his challenger, Democrat Katie McGinty.

Democrats point to a $100 million fine imposed by the bureau on Wells Fargo on Sept. 8 as evidence of its successes in protecting customers. But Republicans have long proposed reigning in the agency, saying it has unilaterally created regulations on payday lenders and other financial institutions.

They see an opportunity now to paint it as ineffective.

The bureau was “asleep at the switch,” said Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., on Thursday.

Stumpf, as he did before a Senate panel last week, apologized Thursday.

“I’m deeply sorry we failed to fulfill our responsibility.” he said.

Stumpf acknowledged that top officials at Wells Fargo should have recognized and stopped the improper accounts. He said performance incentives that encouraged employees to open them will be ended this weekend.

Republicans and Democrats on the Committee were not satisfied.

Hensarling said it’s “beyond credibility that someone in the food chain didn’t condone, order or put a blind eye” to the practice. He said the House committee will continue investigating the actions of the bank and regulators.

For the public, “it’s deja vu all over again,” he said. “Some institution is found engaging in terrible activities. There are headlines. There’s a fine, and yet no one seems to be held accountable.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., questioned why Stumpf sold $13 million in Wells Fargo stock in 2013, around the time regulators were looking into the practices. Stumpf denied he was dumping stock before the practices were discovered.

Harsh comments for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau echoed those of Senate Republicans, who also blasted Stumpf at a hearing last week.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the Senate banking committee’s chairman, noted that Wells Fargo’s practices date to 2011 and were first reported in the Los Angeles Times in 2013.

The Los Angeles city attorney filed a lawsuit against the bank in May 2015 — more than a year before the CFPN took action.

“If there were ever a textbook case where consumers needed protecting, this was it. How many millions of unauthorized accounts does it take before the CFPB notices?” Shelby said.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party, however, saw the debate over the bureau as an opportunity to paint Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican, as too closely aligned with Wall Street.

It released a web advertisement last week in which Toomey condemns Wells Fargo’s actions as “frankly outrageous.” The ad also shows Toomey attacking the consumer bureau “as something we think is terrible” and “completely unaccountable.”

McGinty, his Democratic challenger, last week organized a press call with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who set up the bureau as a special adviser to the Treasury Department before she was elected to Congress.

In a statement after the call, McGinty said, “Pat Toomey has acted not to strengthen protections but to try to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, effectively kneecapping the best consumer cop we’ve got on the beat.”

Warren said in a statement Thursday that Republicans have tried to “cripple” the agency.

“Now the GOP has a new attack — that the agency hasn’t been aggressive enough against Wells Fargo — an attack that would be laughable if the Republicans weren’t working so hard to undermine the agency,” she said.

Toomey’s spokeswoman, E.R. Anderson, said in a statement that the  senator “believes that Wells Fargo employees’ actions were outrageous and fraudulent. He believes that the guilty employees and negligent management should be held accountable” and more investigation is needed.

“But let’s be clear: CFPB did not discover the wrongdoing by Wells Fargo. … It appears that the CFPB was asleep at the switch,” he said.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray has told Congress that the bureau began investigating Wells Fargo after receiving whistleblower complaints in 2013.

Republicans see the bureau as an unaccountable, rogue agency and another example of the Obama administration’s strategy of bypassing Congress to enact regulations — similar to its approach to restricting guns and carbon emissions.

The CFPB is also considering controversial regulations that would require payday lenders to assess whether would-be borrowers can repay without going further into debt. Payday loans have been criticized as trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt.

But others, including the American Banking Association, have said the rule is overreaching and would discourage banks from giving out small loans.

Hensarling, the House financial services committee chairman, complained during a March hearing that Cordray “will presume to decide for all Americans whether he will allow them to take out small-dollar loans to keep their utilities from being cut off or to keep their car on the road so they can make it to work.”

He described Cordray as an unelected “dictator … and not a particularly benevolent one.”

Republicans have proposed taking away the bureau’s guaranteed funding from the Federal Reserve, letting Congress decide how much money it gets, and appointing a commission to oversee it.

The banking association supports the change, saying it will create accountability for an agency that “has been given broad authority that can alter financial markets.”

Toomey has backed the idea, as well.

Unlike some other federal agencies — such as the Federal Communications Commission, which is run by a bipartisan group of commissioners — the bureau is led by a single director, appointed by the president.

A coalition of financial services organizations backing the change in how the bureau is regulated said in a letter to Congress last year that doing so will “promote CFPB’s ability to make bipartisan and reasoned judgments” and “avoid the risk of politically motivated decisions.”

Coming to the bureau’s defense, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said last week that Congress wanted to create “a cop on the beat that’s going to be on the side of consumers.”

He noted that it has won nearly $12 billion in payments to 27 million consumers from credit cards issuers, mortgage lenders, banks, debt collectors and other financial businesses for improper practices.

Consumer advocates, including the Center for Responsible Lending, opposes giving Congress authority over the CFPB’s budget.

The group’s president, Mike Calhoun, said in an interview that doing so would mean a company being investigated by the bureau could go to friends in Congress to prohibit funds from being used for the probe.

Congress could scuttle the agency by simply refusing to appoint commissioners to oversee it.

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at kmurakami@cnhi.com.