Text of Amicus Brief (PDF)

Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, led 11 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee and 22 Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee in filing an amicus brief challenging Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Acting Director Russell Vought’s attempt to dismantle the agency by illegally denying it the funds it needs to operate through a fringe funding theory that has been widely discredited by former Fed officials and multiple federal courts. The lawmakers were joined by former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) and former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), who led the writing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that created the agency and specified how the CFPB is funded.

The lawmakers argued that Vought’s interpretation of Dodd-Frank is at odds with Congress’s plans to provide a consistent and stable funding stream to the CFPB: “Even though the Bureau has long understood those ‘combined earnings’ to include all of the money the various components of the Federal Reserve take in or generate, Vought now adopts the position that the Federal Reserve has ‘earnings’ only when its total revenue exceeds its interest expenses… Indeed, under Vought’s interpretation, the Bureau is most likely to be deprived of its funding in times of nationwide economic upheaval, exactly when the need for its regulatory and consumer-protection functions is most urgent.”

“In sum, Acting Director Vought’s newfound definition of ‘combined earnings’ is completely at odds with Congress’s plan in passing Dodd-Frank and setting up the Bureau. It undermines the Bureau’s independence as a financial regulator; it deprives the Bureau of the continuous and stable funding source Congress expressly authorized; and it supports results Congress never fathomed—and actively worked to avoid. This Court should reject it,” the lawmakers concluded.

Since the CFPB was created, the agency has returned over $21 billion to consumers cheated by big banks or other financial firms. Ranking Member Waters and Committee Democrats have pushed back on President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the CFPB since day one.

• In February, Waters led over 200 House Democrats in filing an amicus brief defending the CFPB in the matter of National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), et al. v. CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought, et al. before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
  
  
• In May, Waters led 233 current and former Members of Congress, including the entire Senate Democratic caucus, in filing an amicus brief in defense of the CFPB.
  
  
• Waters worked with Senator Warren to lead all Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee in filing another amicus brief to urge the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to rehear a case regarding the Trump Administration’s attempted mass firings at the CFPB.
  
  

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