Darling: Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Should Be Abolished

President Donald J. Trump should abolish the misnamed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) or, at a minimum, fire liberal Democrat Richard Cordray who is using his position as chief of the CFPB to launch a campaign for governor of Ohio.

Conservatives are against all the left wing big government regulations issued by Cordray who has become a progressive hero for his war on free enterprise.  The CFPB has mass produced regulation after regulation that attacks arbitration agreements, debt collection rules and credit card agreements – just to name a few.  Some of these regulations are still being written by the left wingers that populate the CFPB.

President Trump should fire every employee at the CFPB immediately and freeze the convertor belt of regulations being spit out by these darlings of the anti-capitalism movement. 

The CFPB was set up to be an independent agency, yet, like the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, they are all part of the Article II, executive branch functions of the federal government and can all be fired.  Legislation was drafted up to make the CFPB independent of the Congress and the executive branch, yet this structure violated the U.S. Constitution’s Separation of Powers.  It is unconstitutional to have an organization that does not fall into an Article I (Legislative branch), Article II (Executive branch) or Article III (Judicial branch) function of the government.  Because of the way the CFPB was set up, it has become a rogue organization that continues to push the Obama Administration priorities of more regulations on the private sector hurting consumers.

One of the rules that can be fixed is the rule that forbids financial companies from contracting with customers to use arbitration to settle conflicts.  The House used the Congressional Review Act to pass H.J. Res. 111 authored by Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-PA) on a 231-190 vote on July 25, 2017.  The Senate has an opportunity to pass Sen. Mike Crapo’s (R-ID) S.J Res. 47, a bill with thirty-one Senate cosponsors, that would stop the rule from going into place.  There are a handful of squishy RINOs like Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) who are holding up a complete revocation of this economy killing rule.

While conservative groups like Heritage Action and Americans for Tax Reform have come out for repeal of the Obama era regulation, some conservatives have gone the other way in support of Cordray’s proposed rule.  Dean Clancy, who is a respected conservative, argues in an Op Ed at U.S. News that the Republican push to obliterate the progressive CFPB rule is “unconscionable, unconstitutional and a big political loser.”  Although he is a great guy, I believe he is wrong on all fronts.

Clancy lists several bad actor companies that have used arbitration to hide wrongdoing, yet this would, as Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) argued ignore “the consumer benefits of arbitration and treats (citizens) like helpless children, incapable of making business decisions in their own best interest.”  It would be unconscionable to allow this rule to go into effect, because conservatives believe that we don’t need a big government nanny state to protect us from contractual relationships.

Also, the only thing unconstitutional is the existence of the CFPB who is the entity that is issuing these rules favored by the liberal trial lawyer bar.   Clancy argues that these provisions somehow violate the constitutional right to a jury trial, yet there is another right recognized that allows contracting between consenting adults.  Only the trial lawyer bar would make the argument that an unconstitutionally organized left wing entity can interfere with the right of free people to contract with each other.

Finally, Clancy claims that the issue is a political loser for Republicans.  It would truly be a political loser for Republicans to not abolish the CFPB, fire Richard Cordray and not repeal this rule, and every other rule, pushed by the far left that would interfere with the right of Americans to negotiate contracts. 

Time for Republicans to act like Republicans again and put some points on the board.