Bringing Accountability to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Protecting Consumers From The Administrative State

MIRING CONSUMERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES IN RED TAPE

Extreme Agency Overreach

The CFPB was created in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Act, and was empowered to “regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services.” Since its inception, the CFPB has frequently acted as its own kingdom, purposefully pushing the regulatory authority granted to it by Congress and operating in an unconstitutional organizational structure.

The CFPB operates outside the realm of Congressional oversight and is anti-democratic, anti-consumer, and anti-business. Consumers deserve a fair chance to access the credit products they need without big government getting in the way. It’s time to reform and rein in the CFPB.

From its inception, the CFPB’s regulations and actions have far exceeded its purpose. Examples include:

Requiring lenders to ask borrowers about their weekly bills and other unnecessary questions related to household spending and sharing that information with the federal government.
Preventing companies from lending to customers who need access to credit because they have less than perfect credit.
Requiring lenders to ask small businesses about the owner’s sexuality before making a loan and sharing that information with the federal government.
Defining using pop-up windows or drop-down menus on a website as an “abusive business practice” to make it impossible for businesses to keep up with or understand an ever-changing regime of CFPB rules and regulations.
Announcing by regulatory fiat new policies by press releases and blog posts that financial service companies must follow – even if they conflict with current federal or state laws or policies.
Avoiding accountability by fighting to keep its budget outside Congressional oversight and the appropriations process, violating the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Learn More about the CFPB’s Unchecked Behavior

Experts agree: it’s time to rein in the CFPB.

“The CFPB has operated in blind pursuit of additional power and has become the hallmark of government overreach – to the point where I am concerned the Bureau is doing more harm to consumers than good.”

Sen. Tim Scott, (R-SC)

Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

“By imposing overly burdensome reporting requirements on smaller lenders, Director Chopra is jeopardizing the privacy and security of small business owners’ personal and financial data.”

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)

Chair, House Financial Services Committee

“By pursuing political ends with funds beyond political control, the CFPB governs without the consent of the sovereign people, which is the sole basis for legitimacy in our republic.”

Brian Johnson

Former Deputy Director, CFPB

“The agency is led by a single, partisan director, Rohit Chopra, who has routinely acted unilaterally and arbitrarily, often outside any statutory mandate…This has led to the CFPB becoming the most unchecked, unaccountable agency in the whole federal government.”

Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY)

Chair, House Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Services

“The CFPB has increasingly expanded its remit and assumed responsibilities of federal agencies whose resources are constrained by Congress. This is exactly what the Founders sought to prevent.”

The Wall Street Journal

Editorial Board

“The CFPB has, however, been an affront to the Constitution for 13 years…the court should declare it a perfect example of what the Constitution forbids, and of what progressives since Professor Woodrow Wilson, pioneering scholar of public administration, have desired: Congress, and politics, marginalized by administrative state ‘experts’ insulated from political accountability.”

George F. Will

Columnist, The Washington Post

“Mr. Chopra insists that he always follows the rules. His view is that he’s simply more expansive than others in determining what those rules are.”

The New York Times

“Wall Street’s Most Hated Regulator Faces a Fundamental Threat”

“Congress’s decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the [CFPB], violates the Constitution’s structural separation of powers.”

U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

Community Financial Services Association of America v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

OUR MISSION

The focus of this project – “CFPB Mission Creep” – is to shine a light on the negative impact of the unaccountable and overreaching actions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The CFPB is criminalizing the common and standard business practices of financial institutions without any Congressional mandate or constitutional funding mechanism.

As a result, the CFPB is making it harder for consumers to access the credit products they rely on.

Learn More

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The Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation (TPAF) is a non-profit non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through research, investigative reporting, and analysis about the effects of excessive taxation, regulation, and spending by all levels of government.