House Republicans renew attack on CFPB, calling it unaccountable

The intensely partisan fight over the operations of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau flared again on Tuesday, as a key House subcommittee chairman accused Director Rohit Chopra of operating a rouge, out-of-control agency.

“The CFPB is increasingly out of control and lacks transparency because there are virtually no checks on the agency’s power,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee’s Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy Subcommittee, said at a hearing called to review the agency’s operations.

Barr added that the committee invited a CFPB witness to testify Tuesday, but he said the agency declined to provide a witness.

The Dodd-Frank Act created the CFPB and included a provision that the agency’s funding is provided by the Federal Reserve and not through the annual congressional appropriations process. That funding scheme currently is the subject of a Supreme Court case in which a trade association has challenged an agency rule, contending that the rule was issued by an agency whose funding was unconstitutional.

 

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