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19 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM REPUBLICANS EXPECTED TO USE NEW MAJORITY POWER TO PUSH FOR CFPB OVERHAUL e U.S. midterm elections are recently over, and already Democrats are circling the wagons to protect what will certainly be a top priority on the Republicans' list of changes to make—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Republicans have hinted, some not-so-subtly, that the bureau is in need of reform, and they intend to do just that now that they have a major- ity in both the House and the Senate. It is widely speculated that financial regulation overhaul, which includes the CFPB and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act along with Obamacare will be two issues Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and Senate Banking Committee Chair Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, will go after first when they take their new seats in January. e CFPB was created in 2011 from the con- troversial Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed by the Obama administration in 2010. e bureau's stated mission is to "make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Ameri- cans—whether they are applying for a mortgage, choosing among credit cards, or using any num- ber of other consumer financial products." In carrying out this mission, the CFPB has penal- ized financial institutions to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, including levying a $37.5 million fine to Michigan-based bank Flagstar in September and a $2 billion penalty against mortgage servicer Ocwen in late 2013. Penalties like these and CFPB Director Richard Cordray's declaration that the bureau will "vigorously enforce" new mortgage servicing rules have caused many Republicans to believe the bureau embodies overreaching bureau- cracy—too powerful because it is not account- able to Congress. In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in July, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, lamented what he believed to be a lack of accountability on the part of the CFPB, openly questioning why a single director heads the bureau when the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and the Securities and Ex- change Commission are all led by boards. Con- gressman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, expressed his disdain for the CFPB in an interview with the Wall Street Journal shortly before the recent election. Hensarling called the CFPB an "unac- countable federal leviathan" in the interview and wondered why the bureau is not accountable to Congress or any government agency despite being funded by the Federal Reserve. Not only that, Hensarling said, only the president can remove the bureau's director and even the U.S. Supreme Court has to defer to the CFPB's decisions. Republicans know that making significant changes to the CFPB will be a difficult measure. e politics of restructuring an authority with the words "consumer" and "protection" in the title are tough if not handled correctly. Just re- cently Barney Frank, one of the chief architects of the Dodd-Frank Act, told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that he sincerely hoped that the Re- publicans would "come after" the CFPB because doing so would certainly mean a backlash from the American people. e campaign commer- cials with big bank CEOs lighting their cigars with $100 bills write themselves. e reforms proposed now are aimed at cur- tailing the bureau's power by replacing Cordray, the bureau's director, with a five-member board and giving Congress control of the bureau's funding. e key for McConnell, Shelby, and Hensarling, and the rest of the Republican caucus will be to make the case that the administration has overcorrected and gain bipartisan support.

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