Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, delivered the following statement at a full Committee hybrid hearing entitled, “Consumers First: Semi-Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
Today, we welcome Mr. Rohit Chopra, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to our Committee. I would like to take a moment to highlight just how important the CFPB has been in the past year. Under Director Chopra’s leadership, the CFPB has been combatting redlining, housing discrimination, illegal evictions and foreclosures, and has worked tirelessly to root out appraisal bias. I commend the CFPB for its announced plans to create an online registry of companies which have violated consumer financial protection laws, which will certainly support CFPB’s current efforts to hold repeat offenders accountable and ensure consumers get the relief they are owed.
CFPB has also put pressure on the credit bureaus to make overdue policy changes to relieve the burden of medical debt on consumer credit reports, highlighted financial institutions’ excessive overdraft fees, helped small businesses get the access to capital they need to thrive, and closely monitored the impact that fintech products and crypto-assets have had on consumers.
And so, Committee Democrats applaud the CFPB for once again putting all of our consumers first with these critical wins, and we remain committed to fighting against any and all efforts to thwart this progress. We are also closely monitoring the deeply flawed ruling from the Fifth Circuit that, while focused on the CFPB’s funding, would disrupt the entire federal government, harm the economy, and leave consumers with fewer protections than the predatory pre-financial crisis days. Democrats support the Justice Department’s and CFPB’s appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn this absurd ruling, and we stand ready to support the CFPB as much as we possibly can.
At one point yesterday, the Ranking Member mentioned that we often times work together, we’ve been able to work together on any number of issues, and we will continue to try and do that. There’s a lot that I can say about my displeasure with the way my Republican colleagues have dealt with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but I’m going to eliminate the criticisms that I have, in an effort today, not only to recognize that this is our last hearing and that I’m looking forward to working with the Ranking Member. And also, I want to give the opposite side of the aisle the opportunity to at least identify what they like and appreciate about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And so, in an effort to end on a good foot, I will yield back the balance of my time.
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