Providing for Congressional Disapproval of A Rule Submitted By Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection

Floor Speech

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Hensarling for yielding, and a special thank you to my colleague from New York, Lee Zeldin, for his support of S.J. Res. 57.

Mr. Speaker, it has been 5 years since the Consumer Financial Protection Board circumvented the formal rulemaking process by unfairly denying consumers and small businesses the right to comment on guidance that will directly affect them.

By executing this wrongful end run around the proper rulemaking process, the CFPB created much uncertainty in the $1.1 trillion auto lending market. In fact, in testimony before our committee, the former Director, Mr. Richard Cordray, admitted to me in testimony that he had to circumvent the rules to target auto lenders.

More than half of car buyers finance their purchases when acquiring an automobile. These consumers have the ability to obtain great auto rates through their dealer-assisted finance, otherwise known as indirect lending.

I have personally met many highly credible auto dealers in my district who are strongly committed to their communities and the consumers who they serve. In fact, one auto dealer that I met with specifically does not even take any form of picture ID when determining lending just to avoid any kind of scrutiny that would actually suggest that they were doing any kind of discrimination.

These auto dealers--and they are mostly small businesses--comply with fair lending policies and practices while meeting the needs of their consumers who desperately need to buy a car and often finance through their auto dealer.

However, this flawed, unstudied guidance, through the statistics we have heard from the other side, threatens to eliminate the flexibility these small businesses, these small auto dealers need to offer discounted interest rates to consumers who need to purchase a car on credit with a very limited budget, especially in my community.

Last Congress, multiple bipartisan letters and bills called for the CFPB to correct and reissue their guidance, which would bring clarity to the market, and study the impact this digression would have on lower income consumers. However, the CFPB refused to provide help on multiple occasions.

It is indeed ironic that the very agency which is supposed to protect consumers is, in fact, harming them with its flawed guidance rules. Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Board to protect consumers, not hurt them.

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Speaker, I just want to emphasize that these small businesses should be protected by the Consumer Financial Protection Board, not targeted by them.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues and everyone join us in supporting S.J. Res. 57 and finally rescind this flawed guidance by the CFPB.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I am sitting here appalled at what I am hearing from the opposite side of the aisle, the fact that they would use the Congressional Review Act to attack guidance and then have the audacity to say in the resolution that they can never, ever again in perpetuity ever have anything like this again.

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