The Republican’s newly revealed act to replace the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act targets one of the most important government agencies to Congress Democrats, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
According to a chart outlining the updates for the CHOICE Act 2.0, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be changed to the Consumer Financial Opportunity Agency, an executive agency with a sole director removable at will. The deputy director would also be appointed and removed by the president.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services and one of the biggest defenders of the CFPB, in response to the new details, said, “The so-called Financial Choice Act is a piece of legislation that will essentially kill the most important aspects of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was designed to prevent another financial crisis. Republicans and Donald Trump have once again prioritized the needs of Wall Street over the needs of hard-working Americans, with a proposal that would take away much needed protections and put our economic security at risk.”
While the CHOICE Act 2.0 was designed as a replacement for Dodd-Frank, which goes way beyond only overhauling the CFPB, the CFPB does face some of the most drastic changes.
Here is her rebuttal to the changes on the CFPB.
Overall, she stated the new act “completely guts and functionally terminates the highly successful CFPB, which has already returned nearly $12 billion to 29 million consumers ripped off by predatory financial institutions.
Specifically, the proposal:
- Eliminates CFPB’s supervision authority over the largest banks and curtails CFPB’s enforcement tools, including those used to stop abusive Wall Street practices like Wells Fargo’s fake account scandal
- Subjects the CFPB’s funding to appropriations so CFPB’s opponents can shrink it
- Hides consumer complaints, even though CFPB’s transparent database has produced results: 97% of complaints referred to a company get timely responses
- Gives the president extraordinary power to fire CFPB’s director at will, politicizing it as an arm of the White House and preventing it from serving as an independent cop on the beat.
Water concluded, “The new version, which is even worse than Chairman Hensarling’s first draft, cannot be allowed to become law. There is too much at stake for consumers and for our economy at large.”
