Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, James Madison told us in the Federalist Papers:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. And if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

And so as I look at this agency which lacks all the traditional measures for constitutional accountability, I am reminded by that insight. The Founding Fathers understood human nature, and they understood that people in positions of power will eventually, at some point, abuse that power. That is just inherent in the nature of man, and so they built a government to have checks and balances.

As I look at this consumer financial protection agency, I am wowed by the amount of power that has been invested in this: very limited executive accountability, the CFPB Director is essentially the financial czar of the country, and no budget oversight by Congress. I know we are trying to change that in this bill, but Madison said that the most effectual check that we have in Congress is the power of the purse.

There is this huge amount of deference in terms of what judicial review is allowed to be done. The courts are instructed to defer to the CFPB. The problem with that is that there are a lot of novel concepts in this bill. Terms are introduced that don't necessarily have a definition in other regulatory history, and the CFPB is basically going to be given carte blanche to go forward on that. And when asked about some of these terms, the CFPB Director said, well, you kind of figure it out when you see it, and it is a puzzle that we are putting together.

Well, that is not acceptable, and I think the American people need to have recourse to the courts. So what my amendment does is it reinstitutes judicial review, and it removes this excessive deference that has been granted to the CFPB.

I hear reports about all this data that is being collected on American citizens--credit card transactions and debit card transactions, millions of these things are being done. Are we just supposed to say that the people should have no recourse in case that is abused? We are just supposed to trust the CFPB in terms of how they use that data?

The bottom line is you have an agency that is combining legislative power, executive power, and judicial power. That is contrary to our constitutional structure and contrary to the separation of powers doctrine, and I don't think most Americans have confidence that some far, distant Bureau should just be left to their own devices and that somehow they will be able to make all these decisions better for individual Americans than they can make for themselves.

So I urge the adoption of my amendment, Mr. Chairman, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment. The notion that somehow we are just going to put all this trust in the CFPB and why you can't have the ability to go into court and have the courts review some of their actions to me just doesn't cut it. I would much rather err on the side of having protections for the American people from government agencies that have too much power than err on the side of giving the agency an excessive amount of power and just hoping that they exercise that in a prudent fashion.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment. I applaud the other Members who have been involved in crafting this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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