(NNPA)—Despite the U.S. Senate’s recent failure to confirm Richard Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, some lawmakers are vowing to press on. In fact, some are wondering why confirming a director should be so contentious for an agency whose sole mission is to protect American consumers.
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This past July, the agency opened shop and began prioritizing efforts. Already, important partnerships have emerged in protections for military personnel and their families as well as older Americans. On the heels of resolving more than 70 percent of several thousand credit card complaints brought directly to the new agency’s attention, complaints are now being gathered on mortgage issues—including servicing, denials for modifications and foreclosures.
After only six months of existence, CFPB seems off to a great start. At a time when millions of Americans are financially challenged, it seems both ill-advised and ill-timed for 45 members of the U.S. Senate to deny consumers much-needed protections.
Following the Senate vote, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio told the Los Angeles Times, “More than 40 of my colleagues chose Wall Street special interests over Main Street consumers. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Those opposing the appointment of a director actually have a problem with the agency’s mission. While the Dodd-Frank Act calls for a single director, congressional opponents insist on a commission form of leadership that would force a majority vote on every reform proposed. In the absence of a majority, the status quo would prevail. And many members of this proposed commission would be regulators with a track record of resisting reforms to bad banking practices.
Additionally, CFPB naysayers would make the agency’s budget a part of the annual congressional approval process. This specific proposal would make the fledgling agency a target of congressional whims, similar to those that diminished the Legal Services Corporation to provide legal services for the poor during the Reagan Administration. Then-President Reagan sought to eliminate the agency by proposing zero funding. If CFPB opponents are allowed to prevail, CFPB would suffer the same annual budgetary risks.
Perhaps that sense of déjà vu and lack of balance between bank and consumer interests is why the Congressional Black Caucus is fighting to allow the CFPB to operate as intended. In a recently published interview, CBC Chair and Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver said, “It is extremely important that it is absolutely clear what this means for African-American families. We want a person who gets out of bed every morning with one goal in mind: protecting the consumers of the United States. We need someone to fight the good fight.”
Rep. Cleaver is not alone. Underscoring the need to preserve the CFPB and its legislative intent, President Obama promised, “Consumers deserve to have someone whose job it is to look out for them. I intend to make sure they do, and I will veto any effort to delay, defund or dismantle the new rules we put it in place.”
It would be a wonderful holiday gift to the country for the CFPB to have a leader whose daily efforts make financial fairness a reality for all Americans. In fact—considering the unique history of African-Americans, full and undeterred regulation of suspect lending practices would go a long way towards the fairness that has been so elusive.
(Charlene Crowell is a communications manager with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at: Charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.)
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