A new analysis by watchdog Accountable.US found that more than $240 million was returned to consumers through the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund from 2012 to 2022. They include Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.
“Republicans in Congress should be celebrating the fact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has recouped billions of dollars for families who’ve been ripped off by bad actors in the financial industry,” Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US’s program on economic security and corporate power, told The Hill.
“Instead, many Republicans are rooting for efforts to defund and defang the nation’s top consumer advocate after they’ve taken millions of dollars from greedy big banks to predatory lenders that want no consumer protections at all,” Zelnick said.
The CFPB is funded by the Federal Reserve, an independent agency primarily funded by interest earned on its government securities.
But the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up a case brought by a payday lending group that would subject the CFPB to congressional appropriations, reviewing a lower court decision that found the bureau’s funding structure “violates the Constitution’s structural separation of powers.”
A slate of 132 bicameral Republican lawmakers signed an amicus brief in July urging the Supreme Court to affirm the ruling.
Throughout their careers, the GOP signatories in these 10 states received more than $51 million from individuals and PACs affiliated with the financial industry players regulated by the CFPB, according to Accountable.US’s analysis of campaign contributions compiled by the nonpartisan money-in-politics organization OpenSecrets.
The Hill’s Taylor Giorno delves further here.
