The president stepped off his tour bus in Kansas this week and said that, "We shouldn't be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening oversight and accountability." Which is why I'm mystified that the president refuses to bring much-needed oversight and accountability to the massive new bureaucracy created under the onerous Dodd-Frank law that established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Today the Senate will consider a nominee to head this agency.
While I have no problem with the nominee, I do have problems with the structure of this new bureaucracy, which lacks critical transparency and which, with only minor bipartisan effort, can easily be reformed. Regrettably, the president has chosen to play politics rather than so much as placing a telephone call to Congress.
This new bureaucracy possesses massive and wide-ranging powers to regulate any person or business offering or selling a "financial product or service" used by Americans
without adequate checks, balances, oversight, or accountability.
The CFPB has been given unprecedented authority over financial institutions and Main Street businesses offering financial services.
Once confirmed, whoever becomes the CFPB director essentially answers to no one and cannot be removed even for poor performance, including unbalanced regulations.
It also has been given significant power to regulate, but
there's no check and balance if those regulations go too far.
Furthermore, the CFPB is funded directly by the Federal Reserve -- not through the standard congressionally approved spending process. That means
little to no oversight of this new bureaucracy.
Time For Accountability At The CFPB