Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee outlined what they believe a reformed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would look like under the leadership of President Donald Trump, even as the administration tries to gut the agency.
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., who chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, called the CFPB under the Biden administration and former Director Rohit Chopra an “Orwellian predator,” and repeated many of the criticisms that Republicans have lobed at the bureau and at Chopra, who is no longer at the agency, for years.
“Nowhere has overregulation and overreach been more evident than at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which became the most unchecked and unaccountable agency in the entire federal government under the previous administration,” Barr said. “Under former Director Chopra, the CFPB prioritized politics over sound policy — leading to disastrous outcomes for American consumers.”
Barr said that Republicans want to transition the CFPB to a bipartisan commission with a requirement that at least two members have private-sector experience. The suggestion comes as the Trump administration has asserted its power over such commissions through executive order and by firing two Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission. The Trump administration has also not named any Democratic board members to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The Republican lawmaker also said that Republicans want to bring the CFPB under congressional appropriations, a longtime goal for the party.
Democratic members — many of whom missed the hearing to attend Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s funeral in Arizona today — pointed to the Trump administration’s attempted dismantling of the CFPB.
The bureau’s new leadership has paused work at the CFPB and has planned mass layoffs, although they have been paused by a federal judge as a court case to determine the legality of the Trump administration’s actions at the CFPB continues.
“We’re acting like this is normal times,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. “It makes me feel better to spend this last hour in a normal committee hearing where Democrats and Republicans are saying the normal things they always say. But that is not the real situation here.”
Other Democratic lawmakers, who earlier in the Trump administration seemed somewhat sympathetic to Republicans’ views on bank and financial policy matters, suggested that Republicans have poisoned the well with the Trump administration’s actions at the CFPB and elsewhere.
“Are we going to defend capitalism here? Are we going to defend competition? Or are we going to just put on a ball gag, climb down into the dungeon and do whatever Trump tells us to do,” said Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill.
Although Republicans hold a rare trifecta in Washington, they’ll still need at least some Democratic buy-in to achieve some of their more ambitious aims on the financial policy front.
Barr has reintroduced two bills, first shared with American Banker late last month, that would significantly curb some of the bureau’s most powerful tools — its ability to police unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices and to issue civil investigative demands.
“If you are so concerned about unelected officials in the executive branch controlling funding in the future of the bureau, why aren’t you supporting reforms to the bureau’s structure to bring oversight back to Congress?” Barr said to the Democratic lawmakers.
