Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, let me thank our ranking member for the time.

I urge a ``no'' vote on H.R. 3193 today. It is a bad bill, and it is bad for consumers, bad for Americans.

As I listened to my colleagues, one of them mentioned the CFPB offers uncertainty. Well, here is some certainty for you. You cannot cheat consumers. That is certainty enough for me. Another one said, well, you know, the CFPB doesn't offer choice. Here is a choice. You can offer any product that is fair and transparent to consumers.

That is exactly what my friends on the other side of the aisle object to. They don't want average Americans to be able to get a financial services product that is fair, that is balanced, and that makes sense in the marketplace.

You have nothing to fear from the CFPB if you do not offer a product that is designed to bilk consumers. If you do, I can see why you might be quite upset at the activity of the CFPB.

The bottom line is this is a bad bill. It will set our country back, and in fact, I believe consumer protection is at the very heart of the recession that we just went through.

Now, of course, we have heard ad nauseam that it was the housing goals and it was the other sort of measures that caused the recession, but the fact is the recession was caused because large numbers of home buyers were bilked into mortgages that they couldn't afford, that were difficult to understand, with high pressure tactics and were incentivized, even to be guided and steered to products that were more high cost than the ones they qualified for.

Then we packaged these things into mortgage-backed securities that were unsound to begin with. The rating agencies said they were fine, took out a form of insurance on them, and then when the house of cards fell, the whole economy went with it.

Consumer protection is at the heart of the problem. Consumer protection is the solution to this problem, and so this effort to undermine the CFPB today under the guise of H.R. 3193 is wrong.

Mr. Chair, we are at a whose side are you on moment. Are you on the side of Mom and Pop, of the small business owner, of the consumer trying to get a house loan or other form of credit? Or are you on someone else's side who is not in favor of a fair product?

I have said to my community bankers, look, your opponents before the crash didn't have the regulator; now, everyone has one. The CFPB offers a level playing field for all. Now everybody offering mortgage products has a degree of accountability. This is good for the financial services sector, not bad.

Since the CFPB was created following the financial crisis, it has received, Mr. Chair, more than 250,000 consumer complaints. Mr. Chair, who are these 250,000 complaints supposed to be directed to but for an agency that is responsive to them? Who would my friends on the other side of the aisle have these people go to to try to get their problems solved? We know that they weren't being listened to before the CFPB.

Now that the CFPB exists, a quarter of a million complaints and untold numbers of complainants have come forward to say, Please help me. Half of these complaints have been in the mortgage servicing area alone. Of the 3,135 complaints from my own State of Minnesota, 1,320 have been related to mortgage issues. This bill threatens to turn off access to these consumers, and I will not stand silently by while they do this.

This is a bad bill.

The CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, this is a bad bill. Among the CFPB's many accomplishments, they have refunded more than $3 billion--billion with a ``b''--to more than 9 million consumers. That is good fiscal stewardship.

Now, the CFPB oversees industries that previously were not regulated by the Federal government, including credit reporting agencies, nonbank mortgage providers, debt collection agencies and payday lenders. All of that consumer protection would end if this bad piece of legislation were to pass.

Say no, resoundingly. Vote ``no'' on this bill.

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member.

I only rise for one simple point, and that is to correct the Record when it comes to this claim that the CFPB engages in massive, excessive data collection of consumers' information. It is not true.

Anyone listening to this debate, Mr. Chairman, should know that the CFPB does not monitor the accounts of particular consumers and does not track the financial behavior or activities of any individual customer.

The CFPB is already prohibited by law from collecting personally identifiable information in the course of its market-monitoring responsibility. Although the Bureau does collect certain information as part of its responsibility to identify and monitor market trends and proactively address emerging consumer credit issues, this information is deliberately depersonalized and aggregated to ensure consumers' sensitive information is protected.

Now, this is critically important because speaker after speaker is trying to scare consumers into believing that somebody is looking at their personal data. It is not true. It is not true, and I think it is important for people listening to this debate to know that.

Requiring the Bureau to seek consent on an individual level in order for it to access aggregated or anonymous data is not only a hindrance to the CFPB's core mission of regulating the entities that offer consumer financial products or services, but it is a burdensome requirement and, of course, intended simply to slow down, gum up, undermine, and break down the institution itself.

It is not true. People's data is safe. Looking for aggregate trends and proactively addressing emerging problems, as would have been very helpful as we got closer to the financial foreclosure crisis just a few years ago, is what the CFPB is doing.

It is doing what it is supposed to do. It is doing it well, and I don't know why any fair-minded person would be against that.

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