The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has no plans to stop enforcing existing consumer protection rules despite the change to a Trump administration, according to an interview with CFPB Director Richard Cordray in The Wall Street Journal.
From the article:
“It’s important to keep in mind that we are a law enforcement agency,” Cordray said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal at a financial regulation event on Tuesday. “That’s an important part of what we do, and it…has to be kept separate from partisan politics.”
Cordray declined to answer questions about how a Trump order to freeze new regulations would affect the bureau’s planned rules. He said bureau lawyers are evaluating the directive signed Friday and how it might apply to independent agencies such as the CFPB.
Cordray’s decision to keep moving forward comes during a time when his entire role at the CFPB lies in question as both sides of the aisle battling over his unusual authority.
The ongoing landmark case between PHH and the CFPB recently noted in its ruling that the director of the CFPB is the “single most powerful official in the entire U.S. Government, other than the President,” in terms of unilateral power.
While PHH won the case, the CFPB filed for an en banc review with the D.C. Court of Appeals, meaning that it wants the entire court to hear the case, rather than the three judges who ruled on the case in October. This is where the case still currently sits.
Since the outcome of the case is hazy, the only way Cordray could be unseated from his position at the bureau is for President Trump to fire him. However, no agency head has ever been fired for cause.
And until a decision or change is made, Cordray said in the WSJ article, “My job is to take the law as it’s given to me and enforce it and implement it faithfully.”
