The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for a range of changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday, including shifting it to a bipartisan commission and bringing its funding under Congress’ control.
The Chamber, the biggest business lobby, is set to release a report Friday outlining 23 proposed changes to the bureau, which is responsible for regulating mortgages, credit cards and other consumer financial products.
Thomas Quaadman, executive vice president of the group’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, said the recommendations were made for the Trump administration’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney, and to prepare for the nomination of the next director.
Most of the recommendations could be carried out by the director, such as overhauling the bureau’s public database of complaints against specific businesses and ending the practice of rulemaking by enforcement.
But it would take Congress to change the bureau’s structure. The Chamber previously has called for turning it into a bipartisan commission such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, but on Thursday the center’s director, Kate Larson, said they were trying to make it clear that they are not advocating the elimination of the bureau.
“In no way are we trying to do away with the bureau, and industry doesn’t want that by any stretch of the imagination,” she told reporters. “We’re just looking at kind of a longer-term, more mature agency as opposed to kind of the pendulum swinging back and forth” between administrations.
Some congressional conservatives, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have called for abolishing the agency altogether.
Democrats and President Barack Obama created the CFPB through the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, giving it unusually broad powers to set and enforce rules. In particular, the bureau was set up with a sole director, rather than a bipartisan commissioner, who under the statute cannot be removed by the president except for cause. The agency doesn’t get its funding from Congress. Rather, it gets money from the Federal Reserve.
Since its creation, congressional Republicans and the industry have repeatedly tried to limit its powers, arguing that it is unconstitutional and unaccountable.
In January, a federal appeals court ruled that the single-director structure of the bureau is constitutional.
