Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3193, Consumer Financial Freedom and Washington Accountability Act; Providing for Proceedings During the Period from February 13, 2014, Through February 24, 2014; And for Other Purposes
Floor Speech
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Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Chairman, thank you for yielding.
Madam Speaker, just to be clear, the bill that is before the House today is not a repeal bill of the CFPB. It is a modification, a reform package to the CFPB. So when my colleagues and friends across the aisle talk about how there will be no consumer protection, that is absolutely false. We just want to make sure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau works better and is more responsive to the American people.
So I want to talk about a few of the things that this bill does. The first thing is it moves the Director of the CFPB over to a bipartisan commission of five. Now, I know my friends across the aisle have taken issue with this. However, when, under Dodd-Frank, the CFPB was originally envisioned by House Democrats and the former chairman Barney Frank, they didn't have a single director; they actually had a commission. When Elizabeth Warren, now Senator Warren, envisioned this package, it wasn't a director; it was a commission. So now that my friends across the aisle take issue with the reform package that has a commission and not a director, it was their original idea. So let's not play partisan politics. Let's join together on points of agreement, and this is one of them.
Another concern, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not responsive to Congress because it doesn't get its funding from Congress. It doesn't go through the appropriations process, which gives us great oversight here in the House. Their funding comes from the Federal Reserve. We think it is appropriate, when you have an agency that is so powerful and so unaccountable, that we give the elected Members of the American people power to say how much money they should have and how they should use it. We don't have that ability right now. And who on God's green Earth says that we should take power away from Congress and let them set their own budgets?
Going to the point of unaccountability, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sets their own pay. Where in the free-market system does any employee tell the employer, This is what you are going to pay me; I am setting my own pay? That is what they do at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And all we say is we, the Congress, the elected representatives of the American people, we should set the pay of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
These are commonsense reforms that actually work for the American people, and, frankly, it will work for the CFPB to make them far more accountable.
The way this bill is set up, not the bill, the law, the way the law is set up, big banks on Wall Street, the very big banks that caused the financial crisis, they are actually able to go and have consumer financial protection rules reviewed by FSOC, and if FSOC thinks that the rule as petitioned by big banks can create systemic risk, the rule can be overturned. So big banks on Wall Street, they get a voice. They get to go: This is bad for us; overturn the rule.
If you come from rural Wisconsin, where we only have small community banks and credit unions, and you see one of our small financial institutions going to FSOC and saying, Hey, this rule is bad for us, the small banks and credit unions, please overturn the CFPB rule, they are going to laugh them out of FSOC. They don't have a voice. Small financial institutions, credit unions, and small banks don't have a choice to go to FSOC and have a ruled overturned by the CFPB.
The way the law was written and the way it has been implemented, they have given a big, loud voice to Wall Street banks but have shut out the small community banks and credit unions that are all over America, the very banks and institutions that lend money to our families, the very institutions that our small businesses on Main Street America, they go to and ask, Will you give me a loan so I can expand my business, maybe create an extra job or two in America? Those are the ones that have been shut out in the review process by the CFPB.
That doesn't work for consumers. That doesn't hurt consumers. That actually helps consumers, and that helps small town America.
I think one of the most important portions of this reform bill--and again, it is a reform bill; it is not a repeal bill--is what we do in regard to data. America has recently learned that the NSA is collecting phone data and information on them and keeping it. Now Americans have said, Listen, I am okay with AT&T or Verizon, whoever my phone company is, that they have my records. But the American people have never given the American government permission to take their phone records, and when they heard about it, they were outraged. They were outraged.
I know my friends on the other side of the aisle are supportive of this expansive NSA, they are supportive of a big government taking information on Americans, but most Americans say, no, we don't want that kind of relationship between the American citizenry and our government. Just like the NSA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is collecting financial data on the American citizenry. They are collecting information on almost 1 billion credit cards. I will say that again. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is collecting data and information on almost 1 billion credit cards, and I would ask, Do you think they have asked permission of the American people to take their financial data? Absolutely not.
All we ask for in this reform bill is, if you want to take America's financial information and you say that you are here to protect the American citizenry, why don't you ask them? Ask if you can take it because I guarantee I know what they are going to say. They are going to say: No way. I am okay with my bank having this information, my credit union having this information, but I will be darned if I want some agency that says they are here to protect me to collect my financial information and my financial records.
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Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Speaker, collecting information from the American people and their phone records is one thing, knowing who you call and when you call them. It is something far different, Mr. Speaker, when you see how they spend, where they spend, when they spend. If you want to know about America, take their financial records.
So all we say in this reform package is give them a choice. If you are here to protect them, ask them and say, We want to take your financial data information; are you okay with that?
If you are here to protect the consumer, why wouldn't you ask them? We mandate, we require the CFPB to make that ask, and there is an important reason behind it, because, as many folks in this body understand, in politics, you can get a good representation of the whole by sampling data, taking a small, small segment of the whole and getting a representation of the whole body.
That is what the CFPB could do if they wanted good market data on how things are working because I do think they need data, they need information, but that is not what they are doing. They are not sampling; they are taking almost a billion credit cards and information from those.
Mr. Speaker, they don't keep that information for a month, they don't want to keep it for a year; they want to keep your financial data for over 10 years. They want to keep your financial data for over 10 years. This is unacceptable, and for my colleagues across the aisle to say that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is only protecting consumers and there is no need for reform is a misstatement. There is plenty of room for reform in a very powerful, very unaccountable agency that is accessing financial information from Americans in a way that they would find unacceptable.
So as we debate this rule, I hope that my friends across the aisle will see the pure-hearted, spirited effort that has been made to actually make the CFPB more effective and more accountable to the consumer.
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