Waters Introduces Bill to Reset CFPB Structure

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, has introduced a bill that is designed to address changes made by the Trump Administration to the internal operations of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

 

Waters’ HR 6972, the Consumers First Act, is somewhat unusual in its harsh denunciation of Acting CFPB Mick Mulvaney and his interim leadership of the agency—the bill makes no mention of Kathy Kraninger, who is awaiting Senate confirmation to become the agency’s new Director. Among the main aspects of the bill would be a limit on the number of political appointees that may be hired by the CFPB, a return to the organizational structure and enforcement mechanisms that Mulvaney inherited in November 2017 after the resignation of former director Richard Cordray, and standardizing the name “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” rather than the “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection” that Mulvaney has put into place.

 

“It is clear that President Trump and his Budget Director are doing everything in their power to roll back consumer protections, strip the Consumer Bureau of its resources and prioritize Wall Street at the expense of consumers,” said Rep. Waters, who promised GSE reform back in July. “My bill, the Consumers First Act, would reverse the harmful changes the Trump Administration has imposed on the Consumer Bureau by restoring the agency’s supervisory and enforcement powers and increasing the transparency and accountability needed for the agency to carry out it’s important mission.”

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