The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversaw the implementation of new regulations creating $2.6 billion in regulatory costs and more than 8 million paperwork hours before last week’s federal court decision finding that his broad powers were unconstitutional, according to a new analysis released Tuesday.
The American Action Forum, a right-of-center Washington research group, calculated the numbers based on the Bureau’s own documents, providing a talking point for conservative critics of the consumer agency.
Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy for the group, estimated that the Bureau has imposed $2.8 billion in regulatory costs since coming into existence altogether, and that $2.6 billion of that happened after its current director, Richard Cordray, was confirmed by the Senate in 2013.
Republicans have long argued that the agency is unaccountable and overly powerful because it does not get its funding from Congress and it has a single director, rather than a commission. Last week’s federal court decision, written by a judge appointed by George W. Bush, echoed that complaint.
Rather than substantially overhauling the agency’s structure, however, the ruling merely required that its director be brought further under the control of the executive branch and serve at the pleasure of the president.
Congressional Republicans, who have sought to reform the Bureau legislatively, used the ruling to press the case that the agency is unconstitutional, and referenced the fact that President Obama initially placed Cordray in his post with a recess appointment, a maneuver that was later voided by the Supreme Court because the Senate actually was not in recess.
“It can be said Cordray was unconstitutionally appointed to an unconstitutional role at CFPB,” Batkins wrote.
While the $2.6 billion figure will give fuel to GOP criticisms of the agency, Democrats can, and frequently do, also tout the $11.7 billion it has claimed for consumers in relief and fines.
Most recently, the Bureau announced in September that it had fined Wells Fargo $100 million for a fake accounts scandal, the largest such action yet.
That fine drew praise from Democrats. Republicans, however, have questioned how the bank was allowed to go on for years creating unwanted accounts for consumers on regulators’ watch.
