Hensarling: We Need a Consumer Protection Agency That is Constitutional and Accountable
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) addressed the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) during an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.Below are excerpts from the interview: “I want to protect consumers from the Orwellian-named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That’s the most important thing we want to do. It is a rogue agency, it has been ruled unconstitutional…In a democracy, one person should not have the ability to determine what credit cards go in our wallets, what checking accounts we can have, or even if we can have a mortgage.” “In many respects, this agency is not just involved in law enforcement, which it should be, but it is actually creating law, and is unaccountable. That has to change. We are trying to ensure that number one, it is Constitutional, and number two, it protects consumers.The greatest way to protect consumers is to ensure we have competitive, innovative, vibrant credit markets. In many respects, CFPB has hurt them.” “We need an agency to enforce our consumer laws. We need Congress to create the consumer laws. Unfortunately, again, CFPB should not be in the business of creating law. They ought to be in the business of respecting due process. So we will have an agency, whether or not the name is changed on the door, whether we have the Federal Trade Commission enforce our roughly 18 major consumer laws, whether we have our banking regulators do it.” “There are still bad players out there. I mean witness Wells Fargo. Individuals need to be held accountable, which is one of the reasons in the Financial CHOICE Act why we have some of the strongest penalties for wrongdoing and insider trading that have ever been written on the books. So we need an agency to do this, but this one has harmed consumers more than they have helped them.” For more information about the Financial CHOICE Act, click here.
