Pg. 20: "Because of the CFPB’s structure, accountability and transparency have fallen by the wayside. “[S]elf-funding … effectively makes the agency accountable to nobody.” Thomas Arning, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: A Novel Agency Design with Familiar Issues, 24 FORDHAM J. CORP. & FIN. L. 153, 169 (2018). So those outside the cloistered community of the Bureau are kept effectively powerless. “[T]here is minimal leverage that Congress,” and by extension the
States, “can bring to bear to influence the agency.”
Roberta Romano, Does Agency Structure Affect Agency
Decisionmaking? Implications of the CFPB’s Design for
Administrative Governance, 36 YALE J. ON REG. 273, 299 (2019) (explaining that the CFPB is the most insulated agency among those with similar regulatory objectives). The States and the public must depend on voluntary disclosures and a couple semi-annual reports to learn what the agency is up to."
"But depending on a self-interested CFPB to do the right thing is a “curious
assumption,” especially when the Bureau has “lack[ed]
transparency in much of its decision-making.” (More on
that below.) Adam C. Smith & Todd Zywicki, Behavior,
Paternalism, and Policy: Evaluating Consumer
Financial Protection, 9 N.Y.U. J.L. & LIBERTY 201, 236-
37 (2015). It’s hardly a surprise, then, that the Court has
already observed how the Bureau’s “financial freedom” “makes it even more likely that the agency will slip … from [the control] of the people.” Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 140 S. Ct. 2183, 2204 (2020) (cleaned up). It already has."
"Remember how the Bureau is led by a single Director who the President may remove and replace at any time. So unlike a multi-member commission, the Bureau’s “priorities may fluctuate with the party of the appointing President,” and Congress has no means to pull it back. Kruly, supra, at 1742. At the same time, the only ostensible check on the Bureau’s budget—other than the soaring cap—is the Director’s finding that the money is “reasonably necessary to carry out the authorities of the Bureau.” 12 U.S.C. § 5497(a)(1).
That provision provides the Bureau a financial incentive to expand faster and farther, no matter whether those efforts aid market improvement or stability. James V. DeLong, New Wine for A New Bottle: Judicial Review in the Regulatory State, 72 VA. L. REV. 399, 421 (1986) (“[A]n agency is subject to strong internal incentives to attempt to expand its budget.”). Aggressive, inconsistent, and unaccountable are not words we usually associate with the quiet prudence of a financial regulator."