McHenry to CFPB Director Chopra: The Public's Trust in Our Financial Regulators is Shaken

Hearing

"The public's trust in our financial regulators is shaken.

Earlier this year, a CFPB employee made an unauthorized transfer of records containing personally identifiable information and confidential supervisory information. Director Chopra, your agency subsequently tried to downplay this major data breach.

Recently, we found out the OCC hired a fraud, who repeatedly lied about his work experience, to lead its Office of Financial Technology. The OCC also tried to sweep this incident under the rug.

Finally, we are all aware of the allegations of widespread and entrenched workplace misconduct at the FDIC. These allegations directly implicate Chair Gruenberg and span his almost 20-year tenure as a leader at the agency.

As CFPB Director, you have a seat on the FDIC board, where you have made your presence known from the ousting of former FDIC Chairwoman McWilliams to the March bank failures. In other words, you know what the heck is going on at the FDIC.

Director Chopra, this Committee is interested in hearing what you knew about the allegations, when you knew it, and any actions you have taken to remedy this unacceptable situation.

This string of scandals has left many--myself included--questioning whether these agencies are up to the task of protecting consumers and ensuring the safety and soundness of our financial system.

When they're not dealing with internal mismanagement, the Biden Administration's supposedly independent financial regulators are busy serving as political actors.

Director Chopra, your CFPB is a glaring example of this alarming trend--becoming a hyper-partisan agency doing the bidding of the White House rather than protecting American consumers.

The ongoing barrage of press releases from the CFPB is misleading at best. They all too often paint with a broad brush to vilify entire sectors of the financial services industry, and even the U.S. financial system as a whole--rather than targeting bad actors.

To make matters worse, where the Biden Administration doesn't have the authority or votes in Congress to make a change, the CFPB under your leadership simply forges ahead, unchecked.

One need only look at your small business data collection rulemaking. The 1071 rule goes well beyond the CFPB's statutory authority to require the collection and reporting of onerous amounts of information in an attempt to facilitate the naming and shaming of lenders whose business activities are unfavorable to progressive activists.

That's why House Republicans will pass a resolution this week to protect small businesses' access to affordable credit by rescinding this burdensome and overly complex rule.

I'd like to close on an area where I believe we've found some agreement--your work on the 1033 data privacy proposal.

To be clear, it's far from perfect. But I believe there is common ground between your proposal and the Data Privacy Act, which the Committee advanced earlier this year.

We agree on the core of the issue--Americans should have greater control over their sensitive financial data. Consumers should know where their data is going, how it's used, and be able to terminate collection of their data by certain firms.

To ensure our data privacy policy is not subject to the whims of any given administration, I believe it's critical that we make law--not just regulation. I hope we can work constructively on this issue moving forward so Americans' financial data privacy is protected for the long term."

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