Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.-10) of the House Financial Services Committee; Representative Andy Barr (R-Ky.-06), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy; Representative Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.-04), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; and Ranking Member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs led a bicameral group of 132 members of Congress in filing an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, et al., v. Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited, et al. The brief urges the Court to uphold the Fifth Circuit’s decision that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) funding structure is unconstitutional and to make the Bureau’s funding subject to congressional appropriations.
The brief states, “The Court need not determine which particular aspect of the CFPB’s funding scheme is the most problematic. This is the easy case. The CFPB ‘is in an entirely different league’ from other entities when it comes to its insulation from Congress… to the point that the CFPB currently operates as ‘a sort of junior-varsity Congress’ setting its own funding levels in perpetuity… Such insulation means that Congress itself is not determining the CFPB’s funding. The Court should affirm the judgment below, which will return the matter of the CFPB’s funding to the normal political and legislative channels, as Article I and the Appropriations Clause require.”
###