UPDATE 3-Obama: will insist on consumer financial protection

* Independent consumer protection agency "very important"

* Obama to discuss financial reform plans on Thursday

* Predicts industry opponents will mount scare campaign (Updates with Obama remarks to ABC, Thursday statement)

By Alister Bull

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he would keep consumer protection at the heart of his proposed overhaul of financial regulation, despite suffering a serious political setback in the U.S. Senate.

"It's very important to have a consumer finance regulatory authority that is willing to actually enforce the law, so that people aren't getting gouged," Obama told ABC News in an interview marking his first year in office.

The White House separately said that Obama would discuss financial reform in remarks on Thursday after meeting in the Oval Office with Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who heads Obama's economic recovery advisory board.

Obama's desire for a new consumer financial protection agency and other parts of his ambitious reform agenda became even harder to achieve after his Democratic party on Tuesday lost its 60-seat Senate majority in an upset victory in Massachusetts by Republican Scott Brown.

This "supermajority" allows Democrats to overcome Republican delaying tactics in moving legislation through the Senate to Obama's desk to be signed into law.

Republicans oppose key parts of Obama's plans to tighten rules on complex financial firms, whose reckless betting on the property market tipped the financial system to the brink of collapse in 2008. Its members have also opposed a financial responsibility fee he wants to slap on banks to recoup billions of dollars taxpayers spent on corporate bailouts.

Obama predicted that opponents of his reforms would pull out all the stops to scare Americans into believing that he was planning a Washington invasion of their lives.

"I guarantee you there are going to be a whole bunch of ads and a whole bunch of talking heads saying this is big government regulation," he told ABC News.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd met with Obama on Tuesday to discuss the future of financial regulatory reform, amid speculation that he might drop a consumer financial protection agency to ease Republican complaints.

Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, is holding closed-door negotiations with his banking committee members on proposals to tighten the oversight of the financial industry and strengthen rules to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis.

But Gibbs said there would be no retreat by the White House on its desire for a major shake-up of regulations, which it says failed to protect the country from a catastrophic housing market bubble and subsequent severe recession.

"Financial reform is going to take and play a bigger role in what happens legislatively in the next several months," Gibbs said. "Ensuring that we have honest rules of the road going forward; that we're not rewarding excessive risk; that we have an independent agency that protects and looks after consumers."

The House of Representatives passed its version of financial regulatory reform in December. The Senate's version is expected to be more moderate. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Jeff Mason; Editing by Eric Walsh)