Warren Says Proposed Consumer Bureau Changes Would Aid Banks
Obama Administration Adviser Elizabeth Warren
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Elizabeth Warren, the Obama administration adviser assigned to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Elizabeth Warren, the Obama administration adviser assigned to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Republican lawmakers are doing Wall Street’s bidding by trying to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding and leadership, Obama administration adviser Elizabeth Warren said today.
“This is precisely the goal of the forces at work to politicize the CFPB’s funding,” said Warren, the special adviser in charge of setting up the bureau, in remarks at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference in Dallas. “If they succeed, the beneficiaries will be some of the same institutions that precipitated the financial crisis.”
Representative Spencer Bachus, the Alabama Republican who leads the House Financial Services Committee, has introduced legislation to replace the CFPB director position created by the Dodd-Frank Act with a five-person commission. Representative Randy Neugebauer, a Texas Republican on the Financial Services panel, has proposed making the bureau’s budget subject to congressional appropriations.
Without independent funding, the bureau would have to “kowtow to powerful banking opposition, making it less accountable to the American people,” Warren said, rejecting the lawmakers’ contention that the changes would make the consumer agency more accountable.
“In the guise of greater accountability, it would be possible to restructure the new consumer agency to make it less -- not more -- likely to achieve its stated goals,” Warren said.
Bachus said “cheerleaders” have diverted attention from substantive questions Republicans have raised about the structure, power and accountability of the consumer bureau, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama last year after being approved by a Congress controlled by Democrats.
“The truth is it is virtually unheard of for an independent agency to be governed by one single director,” Bachus said in a statement released today. “The bill I’ve purposed to place the CFPB under the leadership of a five- member, bipartisan commission is identical to what a majority of the House voted for last year. A bipartisan commission would help take the partisan politics out of the CFPB and ensure it produces rules that are fair and effective.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Carter Dougherty in Washington at cdougherty6@bloomberg.net; Phil Mattingly in Washington at pmattingly@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net
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