Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, earlier today, the President announced his nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I remind him that Senate Republicans still are not interested in approving anyone to the position until the President agrees to make this massive new government bureaucracy more accountable and transparent to the American people.

Back on May 5 of this year, 44 Republican Senators signed a letter to the President stating:

We will not support the consideration of any nominee, regardless of party affiliation, to be the CFPB director until the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reformed.

We have been very clear about what these reforms would need to look like. Republicans have voiced our serious concerns over the creation of the CFPB because it represents a government-driven solution to a problem government helped create.

We have no doubt that without proper oversight the CFPB will only multiply the kinds of countless burdensome regulations that are holding our economy back right now and that it will have countless unintended consequences for individuals and small businesses that constrict credit, stymie growth, and destroy jobs. That is why everyone from florists to community bankers opposed its creation in the first place. That is why we will insist on serious reforms to bring accountability and transparency to the agency before we consider any nominee to run it.

It took the President a year to nominate someone to this position. I hope he will not wait that long to address our concerns and bring the CFPB the accountability and transparency it currently lacks.

I yield the floor.

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