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Cmte Financial Services (R)
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Chairman Hensarling Responds to CFPB’s New Mortgage Rules

Washington, Jan 10 -

Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling made the following comments about the Ability to Repay and Qualified Mortgage rule released by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today: 

“The CFPB has been given a job that is both impossible and dangerous.  Impossible because the CFPB is a big government bureaucracy in Washington attempting to determine which mortgages are appropriate for 100 million Americans, each of whom have their own personal circumstances that the CFPB knows nothing about.  Dangerous because the CFPB has been given vast, unprecedented and unchecked power, all delegated to a single director whose alleged recess appointment by the President is legally questionable.  Rather than bringing greater certainty to the marketplace, every decision made by the CFPB will therefore be under a cloud.  All could be overturned because the CFPB director’s appointment is possibly unconstitutional, unlawful or both.

“These types of ‘one-size fits all’ solutions always – always – are fraught with unintended consequences.  After all, government regulations and policies that strong-armed, incented and cajoled financial institutions into loaning money to people to buy homes they couldn’t afford are a major reason why we had the financial crisis to begin with.  Ironically, now we have government regulations attempting to tell financial institutions not to do what the government was telling them to do before. 

“We have already started to see a consolidation in this market as participants, including banks and other mortgage loan originators, pull back from offering their products and services.  As the Financial Services Committee examines this and other mortgage rules, we will look to see how they will impact a community financial institution’s ability to compete and offer sustainable, affordable mortgages, or whether they will cause a further consolidation toward our nation’s perceived ‘too big to fail’ banks.  We will also examine the extent to which these rules impact a qualified consumer’s ability to access credit, particularly for consumers in small and rural markets.”