It appears that are quite a few Republican members of the Senate who are ready and willing to do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau entirely.
Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, along with Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, introduced a bill that abolish the CFPB by repealing Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
Title X established the CFPB.
But Cruz wasn’t alone last week in launching a full-scale assault on the controversial governmental agency.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, also introduced a bill last week that would kill off the CFPB, albeit in a different way than Cruz’s bill calls for.
Rounds’ proposal would bleed the CFPB dry by cutting off all of its funding sources.
Currently, the CFPB operates as an independent agency within the government and draws its funding directly from the Federal Reserve.
Rounds’ proposed legislation amends the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 to terminate the CFPB’s funding from the Federal Reserve.
Rounds’ bill also requires the CFPB to turn over any money it received as civil penalties to the Department of the Treasury.
The effect of these changes, according to Rounds, would be the “dismantling” of the CFPB.
“A product of the ill-advised Dodd-Frank Reform Act, the CFPB is an unaccountable regulatory agency ran by unelected bureaucrats with no oversight from Congress,” Rounds said.
“No unchecked federal agency should have the power to dramatically alter the financial choices of consumers through the rules it promulgates,” Rounds continued.
“Dismantling the CFPB is but one step we can take to ease the regulatory burdens of Dodd-Frank, the cost of which continues to be handed down to American families,” Rounds concluded. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to roll back the CFPB’s power and prevent the agency from imposing any further harmful regulations.”
While Cruz and Rounds are taking the CFPB head-on, more than a dozen of the Senate colleagues introduced a separate bill last week that also addresses the CFPB’s funding – with a little less gusto than Rounds’ bill.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Accountability Act of 2017, introduced last week by Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming; John Boozman, R-Arkansas; Steve Daines, R-Montana; Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming; Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; John Hoeven, R-North Dakota; Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia; Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin; John Kennedy, R-Louisiana; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Rand Paul, R-Kentucky; David Perdue, R- Georgia; Marco Rubio, R-Florida; and Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina; would bring the CFPB under the Congressional appropriations process instead of drawing its money from the Fed.
