(Alexandria, Virginia) — On the eve of Jonathan McKernan’s senate confirmation hearing to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), CASE offers its most enthusiastic endorsement for his confirmation. Given McKernan’s experience and expertise in pro-growth economic principles, as well as his reputation as an advocate for less government regulation and more free market competition, CASE believes he is the ideal person to help carry out the policy priorities of President Trump.
We further urge US consumers to pay close attention to what transpires tomorrow during the hearing, given the agency’s track record of bullying American businesses and financial institutions with wholly oppressive rules that have served only to punish consumers instead of protect them.For too long the CFPB has operated as its own independent fiefdom, publicly declaring they are beholden to no one, not Congress, not the executive branch, and certainly not US consumers.
This concentration of power, arrogance, and hubris has led to a litany of oppressive and costly mandates on American businesses, financial institutions especially, that have raised costs and limited services for consumers. Driven almost entirely by the far-left politics of the lawmakers who created it and now cheer its every move, the agency has sought to accomplish through bureaucratic fiat that which could not be enacted legislatively. This must end now.
Democrat lawmakers will surely harass Mr. McKernan forcefully, pushing him to commit to the CFPB’s unauthorized role as an unaccountable judge and jury, willing to regulate and punish any private enterprise for any reason they alone so choose. It is our hope, and our expectation, that McKernan rebuts the Democrat hysteria with a plain and simple objective of returning the bureau to its core and limited purpose of protecting consumers against the truly bad actors in commerce, as well as ensuring that the agency not duplicate the administrative purposes of numerous other regulatory agencies, such as the FTC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, Comptroller of the Currency, as well as other state and federal authorities.
Mr. McKernan’s appointment to head the CFPB offers the opportunity to finally rein in this dictatorial bureaucratic wrecking ball and instill some sanity and honest pro-consumer advocacy as the American people deserve and desire.
