Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[Robert from yahoo bd]

NYT today: "Supreme Court to Take Up Case on Fate of Consumer Watchdog

"Supreme Court building in Washington, Jan. 20, 2022. The Supreme Court agreed on Monday, Feb. 27, 2023, to hear a case that could hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and advance a key project of the conservative legal movement: to limit the power of independent agencies. (Shuran Huang/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a case that could hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and advance a key project of the conservative legal movement: to limit the power of independent agencies.

A ruling against the bureau, created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act after the financial crisis, could cast doubt on every regulation and enforcement action it took in the dozen years of its existence.

The central question in the case, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, No. 22-448, is whether the way Congress chose to fund the agency violated the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, which says that “no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”

A unanimous three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, ruled in October that the bureau’s funding mechanism ran afoul of that clause.

“Wherever the line between a constitutionally and unconstitutionally funded agency may be, this unprecedented arrangement crosses it,” Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Don R. Willett and Kurt D. Engelhardt in the ruling. Former President Donald Trump appointed all three judges on the panel.

The bureau is funded by the Federal Reserve System, in an amount determined by the bureau so long as it does not exceed 12% of the system’s operating expenses. In the 2022 fiscal year, the agency requested and received $641.5 million of the $734 million available. The 2010 law said the bureau’s funding requests “shall not be subject to review by” the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.

The 5th Circuit’s decision was at odds with ones from other courts. In 2018, for instance, the District of Columbia Circuit said there was nothing unusual about the funding mechanism.

In urging the Supreme Court to hear the Biden administration’s appeal, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said the ruling “threatens to inflict immense legal and practical harms on the CFPB, consumers and the nation’s financial sector.”

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that a different part of the law creating the consumer bureau was unconstitutional, saying that Congress could not insulate the bureau’s director from presidential oversight given the scope of the job’s authority.

“The director has the sole responsibility to administer 19 separate consumer-protection statutes that cover everything from credit cards and car payments to mortgages and student loans,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

He mentioned the bureau’s funding in passing, noting that its budget had exceeded half a billion dollars in recent years.

“Unlike most other agencies,” the chief justice wrote, “the CFPB does not rely on the annual appropriations process for funding. Instead, the CFPB receives funding directly from the Federal Reserve, which is itself funded outside the appropriations process through bank assessments.”

Roberts made the same point when the case was argued. “They don’t even have to go to Congress to get their money,” he said.

In the administration’s petition seeking review, Prelogar wrote that “the CFPB’s funding mechanism is entirely consistent with the text of the Appropriations Clause, with long-standing practice and with this court’s precedent.”

She added that barring congressional committees from reviewing the funding “simply allocates authority among different congressional bodies” and that “the Appropriations Clause is not concerned with such matters of internal congressional housekeeping.”

The case was brought by two trade groups representing payday lenders. They challenged a regulation limiting the number of times lenders can try to withdraw funds from borrowers’ bank accounts. The 5th Circuit struck down the regulation, saying it was “wholly drawn through the agency’s unconstitutional funding scheme.”

Some cautioned that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case next term would complicate the agency’s operations as other challenges mount. More than a dozen companies have cited the 5th Circuit ruling in seeking to have lawsuits or penalties the bureau has filed against them thrown out.

“A delay in hearing this case only hurts consumers, as this is an urgent issue that has horrifying implications for consumers and our entire financial system,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, chair of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.

Others warned that a decision against the consumer bureau could imperil other agencies.

“If the Supreme Court accepts this deeply flawed argument against CFPB funding, it would set a dangerous precedent that would be used to challenge agencies with legally indistinguishable funding, including the Federal Reserve, FDIC, Medicare and Social Security,” said Nadine Chabrier, a senior policy and litigation counsel at the nonpartisan research group Center for Responsible Lending.

But opponents of the bureau, including Republican lawmakers, countered that the agency was uniquely problematic and hoped the case would resolve a recurring question.

House Republicans have previously introduced legislation that would bring the CFPB into the traditional appropriations process and remain committed to passing such a bill, Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, R-N.C., chair of the Financial Services Committee, said in a statement. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

TUESDAY: U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument: Biden v. Nebraska, a case involving six states challenging President Biden’s student loan debt relief program – LIVE at 10am ET on C-SPAN3 https://t.co/QskODzV2Tx #SCOTUS

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 28, 2023

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From Robert Barnes, the long time Washington Post SCOTUS reporter, today on the Major Questions Doctrine that may or may not help shed more clarity on the MQD, to be argued tomorrow morning at 10am:

"The doctrine, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the EPA opinion, addresses "a particular and recurring problem: agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted."

For that reason, many experts believe the administration's best chance in the student-loan plan is to convince the court that neither the Republican-led states nor two individuals in a separate case from Texas have legal standing to challenge the initiative. Such a conclusion would relieve the court of having to rule on the merits of the case."

Yes Skepi, Pr*vda on P*tomac, you know "Democracy dies in darkness" is their motto, HeeeeHeeee!
Their in depth reporting on the federal government overreach here was.... !

P.S. Skepi, how many VOTES do you think he bought with this little scam?

Do ANY of the POTUS'S FROM EITHER PARTY KNOW ABOUT THIS CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT?

Article II, Section 3: "...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, ...."

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S3-3-1/ALDE_00001160/