The GOP: Objectively Anti-Consumer Protection

Assholes:

Nearly every Republican senator is vowing to block any presidential nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to the agency.

In a letter sent to the president Thursday, 44 GOP senators said that any pick to become the first director of the CFPB, regardless of political affiliation, will be unacceptable unless the bureau is significatly altered to reduce its "unfettered authority."

[...]

"The CFPB as created by the deeply-flawed Dodd-Frank Act is set to be one of the least accountable and most powerful agencies in Washington," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "The reforms outlined are necessary before we will consider any nominee to head this agency.”

"This about accountability," added Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. "The bureau, as currently structured, lacks any semblance of the checks and balances inherent in the Constitution."  

Specifically, the lawmakers are demanding the top of the CFPB be changed so that instead of being run by a single director, it is headed by a board of directors. They also want the CFPB's budget to fall under the jurisdiction of Congressional appropriators — currently the CFPB is set up to receive its budget from the Federal Reserve. And finally, they want other regulators to be able to block CFPB regulations if they deem it could endanger the safety and soundess of banks.

Right, because we all know how much Republicans care about "accountability" or reining in "unfettered power," which is they only care about it when they're not in power, or the issue in question is preventing their corporate masters from doing whatever the fuck they want.

And the "significant alterations" they are seeking would do nothing short of rendering the agency useless, which is their ultimate goal. It has nothing to do with accountability. Proposing a board of directors is their attempt to fill it with know-nothing batshit GOP ideologues to grind the agency to a gridlock of 111th/112th Congressional proportions. There is recent precedent for this; the Republican appointees to the financial crisis commission voted to remove any mention of the terms "Wall Street" or "deregulation" altogether from their commission report, and blamed the entirety of the financial crisis on poor people and minorities and the government. Placing the CPFB's budget under the jurisdiction of Congressional appropriators is another attempt to bring the agency to Congressional heel and ensure that it receives little or inadequate funding to execute its charge. You know, because we are broke, and we can't finance consumer protection when we have really important things to pay for like endless wars and tax cuts. There's actually a good argument to make that more of our financial regulation agencies should be free from Congressional budget appropriations and receive their funding through the Fed as the CPFB would.

Going on three years on now with no indictments or criminal prosecutions of any high-level parties involved with the financial crisis, and to add insult to injury, half of our Senators have their heads in the sand or are running around with their fingers in their ears screaming LA-LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.