Chairman Hensarling Says House Financial Services Committee Will Advance a Proposal to Bring Accountability and Oversight to the CFPB

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling has released a statement regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's ruling invalidating President Obama's recess appointments of three members of the National Labor Relations Board. In his statement, Chairman Hensarling criticized the similar recess appointment of Richard Cordray as head of the CFPB. The gist of the statement as applied to the CFPB reads as follows:

"As it is currently structured, the CFPB is the most powerful and least accountable agency in all of Washington. The Dodd-Frank Act places the CFPB under the control of a single person who has sole authority to command more than 1,000 government employees and spend hundreds of millions of dollars - no questions asked. . . . Congress and the Administration should take this opportunity to make common sense reforms to the CFPB so it is transparent and accountable to the American people. At a bare minimum, the CFPB should be governed by a bipartisan commission - which is how other federal agencies charged with consumer or investor protection operate. And to ensure there is proper oversight of this massive bureaucracy, the CFPB should be subject to the same appropriations process as other agencies. The House passed similar legislation in the last session of Congress and our committee will once again advance a proposal to bring accountability and oversight to the CFPB."

Click hereto view Chairman Hensarling's statement in full (links externally to the House Financial Services Committee website).See also: White House Says It Is Appointing "Cops on the Beat" to Head the SEC and the CFPB.