Protecting Your Credit Score Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. BUDD. Madam Speaker, I want to rise in strong opposition to H.R. 5332, the Protecting Your Credit Score Act of 2019.
Although I will not be supporting the gentleman from New Jersey's legislation, I want to make sure that people know that I consider him a friend, and I thank him for his efforts to try to bring reform to the credit reporting industry.
There are some good ideas in this bill, such as the one-stop-shop approach for consumers to freeze and unfreeze their credit for all three nationwide bureaus that we have just talked about, as well as access to credit reports and scores.
But even this idea is taken too far in the bill, and it leaves too many unanswered questions about exactly how it is going to be carried out.
Now, it is really unfortunate that a bipartisan compromise was not reached. I know the ranking member and his staff worked tirelessly on this with the gentleman from New Jersey and his staff.
But there are a few other points I want to make. You know, it is a chief priority for committee Republicans to protect consumers' personal information. That is something that both sides have brought up.
Yet, we are preparing to vote on a bill that still makes Social Security numbers the primary way to identify a person, despite the fact that we know Social Security numbers threaten consumers' personal information. Worse yet, the bill will mandate furnishers to match all nine Social Security digits.
Another concern with this bill is the creation of yet another ombudsman at the CFPB to deal exclusively with consumer reporting agencies. This provision is unnecessary and duplicative. The CFPB already has an ombudsman to deal with consumer-facing issues. There is no logical reason why the proposed authorities cannot simply be given to the existing ombudsperson. This is simply another move by the Democrats to expand the statutory authority of the unaccountable CFPB.
Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to this bill.
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