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U.S. Senator Katie Britt, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, spoke at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on “Consumer Protection: Protecting Workers’ Money and Fighting for the Dignity of Work.”
Britt has been a public critic of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its lack of regulations in recent months, even being one of ten Republican senators to cosponsor a bill changing its funding model and subjecting it to the congressional appropriations process instead of being funded by transfers from the Federal Reserve.
“What we’ve seen over the last four years is just blatant misuse and a politicization of the agencies in ways that I believe it wasn’t intended. The CFPB has transformed into a regulatory nightmare for the exact people and businesses it is supposed to look out for,” said Britt. “When you look at the way it’s structured, you have one director, no board, no votes [on rules], and, really outside of our opportunity to ask you questions in this setting, no real Congressional oversight.”
Britt also raised concerns about the lack of attention to rampant fraud in the country.
“We have done so much when it comes to cracking down and combatting fraud, just last week, Senator Britt, we sent $38 million to 93,000 Alabamians who were involved in a very harmful scam,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
Britt pointed out that Chopra does not often discuss fraud education in his speeches, despite this being one of the CFPB’s core functions listed on its website.
“When I looked at your budget that you put out, it looked that you requested, in addition to the $700 million, $142 million, so about over $840 million to be used at your discretion. When I looked at the actual investments that were made, and I know I’m out of time, actual education, it looked that it was only about $5.7 million,” said Britt.
Speaking to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Chopra discussed how the CFPB had looked to cut wasteful spending and drive information to consumers where it was most applicable.
“For example, when it comes to disasters, our materials and information are bundled with information that FEMA provides. I think we don’t want to inundate people with different pieces of paper from different agencies, but study specifically where are people consuming information and how can we get them at the right moment,” said Chopra. “So I don’t want the CFPB to be judged by the number of brochures it passes out, we should be judged on how we can arm people with the ability to spot scams and to crack down when it takes place.”
