Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told lawmakers Wednesday that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an unaccountable agency that collects too much data on Americans.
“We have an agency that is collecting more information about Americans’ private lives than any bureaucracy deserves for reasons unrelated to national security,” Gingrich told the session of the House Financial Services Committee. “It is dictatorial. It is unaccountable. It is practically unrestrained in expanding on its already expansive mandate from Congress.”
Congress created the CFPB in 2011 as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act passed the preceding year. It has come under fire from Republicans for aggregating massive amounts of consumer data, trying to guess the racial or ethnic status of consumers by using indicators like names and addresses, and suing banks for loan discrimination based on those conclusions.
Gingrich said it was also troubling that the agency falls outside of the congressional appropriations process by drawing its funding from the Federal Reserve.
“For all practical purposes, this means the bureau is free to do whatever it wants within the broadest imaginable interpretation of its authority,” Gingrich said. “We know this formula is dangerous because we have watched the bureau’s behavior over the past four years. We have seen the contempt with which it treats Congress and the American people.”
Democrats attacked Gingrich for his work as an adviser to the U.S. Consumer Coalition, a group working to reform the CFPB, and argued that the bureau was similar to other agencies, like the Federal Reserve, that also work without congressional oversight.
“I know that you know how this place runs. You ran it with a strong hand, so I know you know how it works,” committee Ranking Member Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told Gingrich. “Some of us are very appreciative that Dodd-Frank created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
In spite of the Democrats’ criticisms, several Republicans on the committee yielded their time to indulge Gingrich’s lengthy responses, characterized by his signature rhetorical flourishes.
“This is a monster, which, if Democrats thought about it, they would rush to create a bipartisan board … Imagine if you got a President [Ted] Cruz, or a President [Donald] Trump, and they decided to create their version of this kind of collection agency,” Gingrich said. “Let’s say instead of being anti-gun is, as the current group is, they were pro-gun. And so they decided you really ought to have lots of credit if you were a gun dealership.”
“The government, in the end, is always about power and the ability of the state to coerce. When you have people in darkness who are able to exercise the power of the state to apply their prejudice, and their ideology, that can destroy normal people,” he added.
