Date: 2014-02-27
Speaker: CAROLYN B. MALONEY (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: New York

Mr. Chairman. I thank the gentlelady for yielding and for her hard work on the Financial Services Committee. I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3193. which is a blatantly partisan assault on the CFPB and on American consumers. I think it is telling that just 4 months after the first government shutdown in 17 years. the Republicans want to remove the CFPBs independent source of funding and subject it to Congress deeply dysfunctional appropriations process. It is telling because it exposes the true purpose of this bill. It is not to make the CFPB more accountable. but rather to undermine. defund. and hinder its ability to act to protect consumers in every possible way. The dysfunction that led to last years 16day shutdown is exactly why we gave the CFPB an independent source of funding in DoddFrank. We wanted to insulate the CFPB from the political games and partisan brinksmanship that. unfortunately. became a staple of the appropriations process. Another key reason for creating the CFPB was to make sure that we have at least one regulator whose sole purpose is protecting consumers. Prior to the financial crisis. consumer protection had. unfortunately. become an afterthought of the banking regulators whose primary mission was protecting the safety and soundness of the banks. but not consumers. When Congress created the CFPB. the whole point was to create a regulator whose sole focus would be to protect consumers. The reason Congress did this was that. prior to the financial crisis. consumers were an afterthought. a secondary thought. a third thought. or usually not even thought about at all. So it was a huge step forward to have a department that was focused on protecting consumers from new products that were harmful and from innovations that were not tested that were harmful to the consumers and the economy as a whole. which led to the financial crisis. This was a huge step forward for consumers when it was created. Unfortunately. this bill before us today is a huge step backwards because it would give the safety and soundness regulators more authority to veto the CFPBs consumer protections in the name of bank profitsjust like in the old days. Lets remember that. in just its first 21/2 years. the CFPB has already made huge strides on a number of important consumer protectionsfrom new mortgage protections to credit cards to payday lending. An independent source said the credit card bill of rights that was supported by the CFPB saves consumers $20 billion a year. That is a huge step forward for consumers. and the Bureau has been willing to make sensible changes when it has needed to. Last year. the Bureau adopted amendments to the CARD Act that would allow stayathome spouses to take out credit cards in their own names. This was a commonsense fix for an unintended problem for stayathome spouses who were creditworthy. and they made the decision so that they were able to get these credit cards. That is a huge step forward. and I worked with Mrs. CAPITO on it from across the aisle. The Bureau continues to work hard to develop consumer safeguards in rapidly growing areas. such as prepaid cards and overdraft protection. both of which many Members on both sides have a keen interest in seeing going forward. In short. the CFPBs work has already made the lives of American consumers and our constituents better on a daytoday basis. This bill would undermine these results. and it would weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. so I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose the bill. I would like to place in the RECORD independent organizationsliterally well over 100that are in support of the CFPB and that are in opposition to this bill. They are good government groups. credit groups. individual legislators. and local and State partners. all of whom are in opposition to the bill that undermines the work of the CFPB. which is there to protect consumers.