by Jeff Sovern
He said it on Meet the Press. You can watch it here; you can also find coverage here and here. His claim seems to be based on the Bureau's having a director rather than a commission and not being subject to the congressional budgetary process. Exactly like the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which Republicans seems to have no problems with. Could the difference be that the banks have captured the OCC and not the Bureau? Incidentally, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, among industries commercial banks are the eleventh largest contributor to Graham, while "miscellaneous finance" rank thirteenth.
At present, the Bureau, like most bank regulators, does not get its funding through annual congressional appropriations. Instead, the Bureau gets its money from the Federal Reserve budget, though it can't spend more than a certain percentage of the Fed's budget. As I explained last week on the blog at http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2011/12/why-the-cfpc-needs-the-same-budgetary-authority-as-other-bank-regulators.html, the Republican proposal to subject the Bureau to the annual appropriations process would enable financial institutions to lobby members of congress to reduce the Bureau's budget to keep the Bureau from doing things the industry doesn't like. The same formula crippled Fannie Mae's regulator, which led to Fannie and Freddie needing a buyout.
Posted by: Jeff Sovern | Monday, December 12, 2011 at 02:55 PM
What does it mean to say that the CFPB is not subject to the congressional budgetary process?
Posted by: Bongo Jim | Monday, December 12, 2011 at 01:56 PM