CFPB Semi-Annual Report: A New Day Through Reform

Good morning. We'll call this hearing to order. Thank you for being with us to vote. Today the committee welcomes Acting Director Russ Vogt to discuss the C- CFPB semi-annual report to Congress. This hearing is an opportunity to discuss what a new day at the CFPB looks like. And truly, a new day in a very good way. Finally, we have a bureau that respects the limits of its authority. A bureau that follows its mandate instead of pursuing an ideological agenda. The decisions that are made at the CFPB affect everyday life of for Americans and their families they deserve a bureau that recognizes a simple truth. Access to affordable financial products is a key part of consumer Protection. Consumers must be treated fairly. Bad actors must be held accountable. I believe the best way to protect consumers is through competition, choice, and clear rules, not through heavy-handed Washington control that leaves consumers with fewer and fewer options. In South Carolina, I hear from constituents who are working hard but still feeling squeezed. For them, a financial product is not a political talking point. It can be the bridge between getting by and getting ahead. That is why affordability starts with access. As you know, many consumers choose to use overdraft services to make ends meet. But the Biden CFPB attempted to impose price controls that would have largely eliminated access to those services. I wanna stop there for a second because it's such a easy thing to run by and then later on it will be attacked and demonized. But the truth of the matter is that when price controls are put in place banks and creditors eliminate access. Classic point is when we have the ten percent cap conversation. Director Vogt, you probably remember when we were having as a nation this conversation around capping credit cards at ten percent. The fact of the matter is that when you cap credit cards at ten percent, what you ultimately do is you eliminate credit opportunities for those having less than a seven hundred and fifty credit score. The vast majority of Americans have less than a seven hundred and fifty credit score, which means that they would ultimately have to go somewhere else other than a bank or a regulated entity to find access to credit, which means that they would become even in greater jeopardy than before. Under, we rejected that harmful rule. When Washington writes rules that push responsible products out of the market, people do not stop needing those products. They are just left with limited choices, higher cost, and worse alternatives. Regulatory relief is not just about banks or businesses, it's about the impact on the people they serve. When unnecessary rules drive up compliance costs, those costs show up as higher fees and fewer options for families and small businesses. The rules should be clear, lawful, and focused on actual harm. A responsible CFPB should provide clear rules of the road so consumers, innovators, and community institutions know what is expected of them. For too long, too many policies were built on shaky legal ground or the idea that Washington knows best. During the Biden administration, the CFPB functioned as an activist organization that ignored statutory limits on its authority and effectively became part of the White House's messaging operation. That's why virtually all, virtually all of the Biden CFPB policies are now gone, either struck down in court, overturned by Congress, or rescinded because they were so partisan and often illegal. In contrast, clear and durable rules help businesses compete, banks lend, and consumers access the products they need, with confidence that the CFPB's policies have staying power. Republicans have also taken action to right-size the bureau itself. Congress substantially reduced the CFPB's statutory funding cap, placing meaningful limits on agency on an agency that it operated far too long, without sufficient budgetary discipline and with bloated staffing. Acting Director Vogt. I appreciate the work that you have done to rein in the agency's overreach, rewrite problematic rulemakings, modernize supervision, and operate within a responsible budget. Finally, we should have an honest conversation about the structure of the CFPB. Democrats created an agency with a with a single director and extraordinary power. If they now believe one person has too much power and control over the bureau, they should work with Republicans on structural reforms that would reduce partisanship increase accountability and bring long-term stability to the CFPB. The CFPB should protect consumers and preserve access by promoting competition and choice, not by imposing price controls or heavy-handed mandates. That is the standard I will use today. And I look forward to your testimony. Ranking member, Warren.

Ah, thank you, Mister Chairman. Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in our nation's history, not by a little bit, but by a wide margin. The president and his family are enriching themselves by billions of dollars with shady crypto-ventures. Pardons are handed out to white-collar criminals like it's Super Sales Day at Macy's. uh reportedly with a two million dollar price tag per pardon. Trump allies fork over millions of dollars for the president's gold-encrusted ballroom or one of his other vanity projects. And then those allies get a regulatory favor or a big government contract or both. Trump and his cronies get rich and hard-working middle-class families pick up the tab. One clear example of how families pay for Trump's corruption is over at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB. For one solid year, while he ran for office, Donald Trump promised to bring down prices on day one. Those were his words, on day one. We are now on day five hundred and forty-one, and prices are up, up, up. And President Trump claims affordability is a hoax. One of the tools available to Trump to keep costs low is the CFPB, to return money to American families when they've been cheated. But instead of delivering help for people who have been scammed, Trump's acting Director of the CFPB, Mister Vote, has attacked the agency and, according to a report I am releasing today, where we gathered the data together, those attacks on the CFPB have cost American families twenty six point five billion dollars so far. The CFPB's whole job is to fight for the little guy. Since it opened its doors in twenty eleven, it has returned over twenty one billion dollars directly to families who have been ripped off by massive corporations, shady lenders, and big banks. Now that's great for American consumers, but not so great for the giant banks and big-time cheaters who have gotten caught. So President Trump took a side between those two. Instead of helping families when they are cheated, he put Mister Vogt in charge to try to shut down the agency. On multiple occasions, Mister Vogt tried to fire nearly all the staff and shut off the agency's funding. Mister Vote has clearly made it his mission to delete the agency from existence. He has failed. So, Mister Vote and President Trump have moved on to plan B. Instead of shutting the agency down, just use it as another corrupt way for Trump and his buddies to make more money for themselves. Now, how do you take a consumer agency and turn it into a cash grab for corporate cheaters. Acting Director Vogt has figured out a way. Take a look at just some of the examples of what he's done over the past eighteen months. Because it got caught scamming its customers, Navy Federal Credit Union has been ordered by the CFPB to return eighty million dollars to the service members who had been cheated. Director Vogt came in and said, " Oh, that's okay. Navy Federal can keep the eighty million dollars and the people who got cheated just don't get any money back." JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo are a few of the bank owners of Zelle who got sued by the CFPB for allowing people who use Zelle to get scammed out of eight hundred and seventy million dollars. Mister Vogt? dropped the charges, and the people who got cheated, they get nothing. Regions Bank had settled a case with the CFPB, and the bank had agreed to refund consumers a hundred and forty-one million dollars. Vote, dropped the settlement, and the customers got nothing. Capital One was sued by CFPB for cheating its customers at a two billion dollars. And once again, Trump and vote said, " Keep the money." And the people who got cheated? Got nothing. Look, it's a long list. But the important thing to remember here is the people who got cheated are millions of Americans who are just trying to get by. And the people who got away with cheating them were giant companies that in many cases had already agreed to make refunds to the people they cheated. I'd like to enter into the record uh letters from organizations across the country representing the people who have been hurt by the Trump vote CFPB shutdown, Mister Chairman.

Absolutely.

So, I have to ask. Why would Trump and vote do this? Just follow the money. The same group of billionaires that poured millions into Trump's political campaigns into his ballroom, into his crypto projects, are the very same people who cheated hardworking Americans and then got a free pass from Donald Trump and Russ's vote. This is corruption and acting director vote is right at the center of it. Thank you, Mister Chairman.

Today we will hear from the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russ Vogt on the CFPB semi-annual report to the Congress. Acting Director Vogt, thank you for your testimony, thank you for being here, you are now recognized.

Thank you Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and members of the committee, for the invitation to appear before you today as I reach the end of my tenure at the CFPB. I am pleased to present the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's semi-annual report to Congress as well as to provide you an update on our activities. After being appointed Acting Director, our team took a look under the hood and found an agency that was weaponized out of control and had gone far beyond its statutory mandate. Under previous administrations, this agency actually imposed huge costs on the American people, and stifled the innovation and resourcefulness that is necessary for a strong economy. Consumers paid the price literally in the form of higher prices, reduced product offerings, increased borrowing expenses, and misuse of their taxpayer dollars. The Council of Economic Advisers found that consumers cost them two hundred and thirty-seven to three hundred and seventy billion dollars since twenty eleven. Instead of going down this destructive path, we have steered the Bureau towards operating with humility, accountability, and fiscal responsibility. Regulation should be justified by statute, not the whims of ideologues at the Bureau. Supervision should be precisely targeted to avoid stifling, economic growth and innovation, and disproportionately increase in compliance costs. and enforcement should be based on clear violations of the law not on advancing political agenda outside of accountability and oversight from elected officials and the american people the bureau's express purpose is to implement and enforce federal consumer financial law consistently so that all consumers have access to markets that are fair transparent and competitive while we have sought to downscale this agency to the maximum extent possible and rein in its abuses we have continued to operate in accordance with that purpose. The Bureau's enforcement actions are now focused on addressing actual harm to consumers and ensuring due process. President Trump ensured that the Bureau, along with other so-called independent agencies, are accountable to leaders elected by the American people and no longer operate with impunity. Recently, the Supreme Court confirmed that no such independent agencies exist in slaughter. The Bureau's regulatory actions are no longer developed in isolation and the rest of government works to improve its proposals through o ira i have also reoriented our internal processes in supervision the bureau focuses its resources on pressing threats to consumers and the areas that are clearly within the bureau's statutory authority in the past the supervision program pushed well past the limits of its authority under the guise of consumer protection the bureau also now avoids duplication of supervision by other regulators Supervision is conducted with transparency and respect, as examiners announce through the humility pledge, they must read at the beginning of all examinations. Enforcement also is being guided by a new set of principles, so that the CFPB focuses on addressing actual harm to consumers, ensuring due process, seeking collaboration, and promoting efficiency. When President Trump, under President Trump there's been a paradigm shift in the way that the CFPB regulates, supervises, enforces. as required by the dodd-franked act though we have improved a great deal about how it operates the bureau remains structurally defective and i do not believe that it should exist in its current form i have been committed to running it in a responsible manner and addressing real harms instead of remaking financial markets in service of a radical political agenda if confirmed i know that president trump's nominee brian johnson will do a great job in continuing to steer the cfpb in an appropriate manner Ultimately however, CFPB must be subject to Congress's most basic function, the appropriations process, to ensure accountability and legitimize an otherwise unserious agency. Thank you and I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you, Mister Vo, uh the best way I'll we each get five minutes, by the way, and I'm pretty consistent with asking for us to just take five minutes. And so, uh, that includes questions and answers. I'll start. The best way to protect consumers and increase affordability is not through heavy-handed regulation but through competition and choice. When over-regulation pushes responsible products out of the market, consumers are left with fewer choices and higher costs. Virtually all of the Biden administration's CFPB policies have been struck down in court eliminated by Congress rescinded or rewritten. Many of those policies would have eliminated consumers' access to important services. And I am grateful that this administration is correcting that overreach. We know over-regulation has a cost. How is the CFPB's return to clear, lawful, and appropriately tailored regulation, strengthening competition and reducing unnecessary costs across the financial marketplace to promote affordable financial products?

Thank you, Senator. I think the biggest uh way that we're doing that right now is that we've ended regulation by enforcement. Uh, we're giving the um American people clear understanding of where we will supervise and enforce and it is not gonna be in areas that you all have not given a statutory authority. Uh, in addition, we are interpreting our rules as the statutes uh have uh articulated, and being very, very careful not to go beyond those statutes. Uh, particularly in regard with regard in the aftermath of recent Supreme Court decisions. So, uh, our view is that Congress makes these laws. Uh, CFPB has been given enormous tools, and we wanna be very, very cautious in using those tools.

Excellent. Leads leads right into my next question. Under former Director Chopra, CFPB frequently ignored regular required rule making procedures and sought to make new policies through guidance, Press releases, blog posts, or threats of enforcement. You've reversed that trend by adhering to proper rulemaking procedures and rescinding guidance that was legally dubious or overly burdensome. Can you discuss why an activist CFPB that regulates through enforcement or post or press releases or threats is harmful to consumers?

Well, it raises the costs on them and um when you have a a supervision approach and enforcement posture that honestly resembles a sue and settle approach um, you don't have clear guidance to the f- financial markets to the regulated entities in any way that allows people to take risk to innovate uh when they feel that their innovation is gonna have the hard edge of a regulator come behind them. And that doesn't mean that people don't make sense um but when we see something that we're concerned about our first step now is to figure out what's going on and to get it fixed remediation we wanna encourage self-reporting um we want reconciliation if we can't do it at that level then we will take adversarial action

mmm

um and we are underway in a number of those instances so uh our belief is that um we wanna encourage innovation in financial products because people will benefit from that and um you know I probably get asked about Navy Federal Credit Union, um we want people to have overdraft protection. If you've ever lived paycheck to paycheck, overdraft protect protection ensures that your check doesn't bounce and you pay a worse fee because of it and it's often very embarrassing. Overdraft fee is designed to prevent to to protect that gap and the previous director came in without a rule, without a statute and put out guidance uh guidance that was different than the previous set of policies. And came in and and maybe federal credit union as a result was out of compliance with that new guidance that had never gone through notice and comment. We we put an end to that. That's the type of thing that we're doing, Senator.

Well, I have a couple other questions for you, but I'm gonna skip my questions. I think you made a really important point that I wanna highlight and then you can have time to comment if there's time left but I will say without any question, as a kid that grew up in poverty. In a single parent household. The one thing I understand is that when people with good intentions try to limit access, the undetermined consequence is higher prices for people living in poverty. A classic example is that every single time you limit some fee that you think is bad, you actually increase the cost on the consumer. As an example, you you limit the overdraft fee, but what you're actually doing is you're sending sometimes consumers to other alternatives that are painful, onerous, and expensive. I remember having to go to rent a own place to get the first microwave we had in the house. Why do we do that? Because we couldn't afford any other options because credit was not available. And what we do not need to see is a return Congress and the Senate trying to make good things better, actually making it worse.

Uh, thank you, Mister Chairman. So, acting director votes, since you took over the CFPB, The Bureau has dropped more than forty enforcement actions against giant corporations that have cheated American families. That's forty. And instead of having to pay back the consumers they cheated, you've told these corporations, keep the money for yourself, consumers get nothing. Let's look at one example. In twenty twenty three, Toyota agreed to pay fifty million dollars to settle a claim that thousands of consumers were tricked into buying add-on insurance and warranties that they didn't need and they didn't want. Secret emails show that a Toyota lobbyist reached out to you quote, "to see if there's a positive path forward on their already agreed-on settlement." To ask you for help after they had already agreed to repay the consumers they had cheated. Now, two weeks Toyota's lobbyist reached out to you. He followed up with your second in command and said he had also flagged the issue for the White House. Oh, and Toyota did one other thing before they reached out to you. They donated a million dollars to the president's inauguration. And just like that, you, you reversed their already agreed upon settlement. So, acting director vote, that affected thousands of people. How much on average did Toyota's customers get scammed out of

well i think the way you've just characterized that is inaccurate and uh i never talked with that lobbyist and let me just explain that

if that's world documented mister vote

you specifically when you wrote the law did not give the CFPB authority over car dealerships this was a novel theory that did not have a basis in the statute and we dismissed it

so mister vote mister vote Toyota had already agreed that they had cheated people out of money and agreed to pay the money back. And I'm asking you, when you took the action to say to Toyota, you keep the money and let all those people who got cheated just go suck air. When that happened, how much was each of those people, how much had they been cheated out of?

Senator

I assume you had looked at the file and knew what

Senator

it was that you were letting Toyota keep the money for.

Senator, one of the hallmarks of our our uh stewardship of the agency is we're not gonna use the sue and settle, uh, consent orders,

I, oh listen, I understand that.

to be, to, to go after companies when we don't have the statutory authority to do so.

I'm asking, do you know how much each of those people had been cheated out of? I'm kind of thinking maybe you don't. It ranged from seven hundred dollars to two hundred, uh, two thousand five hundred dollars each. So if you were a Toyota customer who got scammed out of hundreds of dollars, and you were in line to get a refund, and you found out that Toyota sent a million bucks to the president and now Toyota doesn't have to pay you back, you might look at that and think it sounds like corruption. Acting Director Vogt, how many of the enforcement actions and investigations that you dropped were against companies that have donated to President Trump?

We've made every determination with regard to supervision and enforcement enforcement without regard to anything other than the statute and the charge that we've been given at the agency.

That's not my question, Mr. Vogue, and you know it. How many have donated to President Trump? You've dropped forty plus actions for companies. How many of those companies have donated to President Trump?

I have no idea, because I never looked at such things.

You have no idea? Actually, some of them were telling you. Toyota, for example, said, " Oh, we've reached out to the White House," and it's a matter of public record. where they donated a million dollars. You know, so I've got a list here of companies that cut checks to President Trump that we know of. Apple, Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan. You want me to keep going on this? Um, Toyota, Walmart, Meta, and that's just at the CFPB. In twenty twenty five, across federal agencies, The Trump administration dropped cases against more than fifty companies that we can document have financial ties to the president or to his inner circle. So, let's take a look at one more case, one you have mentioned. Navy Federal Credit Union got caught by the CFPB charging illegal overdraft fees. If you hadn't dropped in and called off the settlement, they had agreed to a settlement, How much would our service members have been reimbursed for getting cheated? How much?

Those fees were not illegal, and remember that this was a credit union made up of service members who would have had to pay for that cost.

I'm sorry, Mister Chairman, thank you very much, they were illegal,

Yes, sir.

they agreed to pay.

Senator Reynolds.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Um, I've got a couple of different questions I wanna do, but I'd let me provide you with a few minutes here to just clarify and finish answering the questions that i think are good questions from the ranking member but i think your answers might help to clear that up i don't think you were given the opportunity to answer them there was a we when we write a statute and we give authority to an executive uh uh a branch office to execute a law we lay out very clearly within the statute what those authorities are And if you go beyond those authorities, uh, you're violating a law, in my opinion. Could you clarify a little bit, i- i- is there a statute that would have provided the CFPB with the authority to go after uh auto manufacturers?

No, Senator, and I agree with you.

Explain that a little bit, please.

No, I mean, when you all pass statute and give us authority to rule make, you're you're giving a delegated authority to us. that is is something we have to be very very good stewards of. And the last thing we wanna do is go beyond how you've articulated or if there's discretion in a law to do it outside of how you've intended us to use that law. And so we have been very cautious at CFPB in rolling back guidance that was in conflict with the statute or certainly never entertained by the statute. And that's really what we've done since I've been there at the CFPB.

So with regard to the issues that have been brought up here so far in this meeting. It was a determination that the CFPB prior to uh or i in the previous administration had decided outside of what would have been a statutorily directed uh order um that that they were simply going to go after a particular company because they thought they could uh exceed what the authority was that was granted by Congress. What uh, we talked a little bit about sue and settle. Talk about what that means with regard to what the CFPB was doing in terms of being coercive to businesses and what the cost could be for those businesses if this hadn't been corrected uh by the Trump administration and and uh and the corrections to the CFPB.

CFPB has the authority to do administrative consent orders. uh in conjunction with their supervision and enforcement uh authorities and so they have the ability uh to really uh put it the onus on a particular company um and and make a finding and have uh penalties that accrue as a result of that some of them tolling at a very high level and so if you're one of those companies you what are you gonna do you're gonna settle to make the

Any any any limit on how large those those uh costs could be if they don't settle?

They can get up to very, very large amounts and that's one of the reasons why you see companies settling, even when they know that they have done nothing wrong and not contesting the issue.

In other words, they're making a business decision saying, I got a deal with a bureaucrat and the bureaucrat can make life real miserable for my entire entity.

Precisely.

Kinda like if uh a prosecutor walks in and says, I'm gonna charge you with a felony, but if you make a deal with me to take a misdemeanor, uh, I'll let you off easy. And the guy looks at and says, I'm innocent, but I can't afford to pay the damn bill for a felony. So maybe it's easier for me to just take the misdemeanor. Is that what this was amounting to?

That's exactly what we have found.

But in this particular case, we're talking millions of dollars that somebody has to pay.

Correct, and with the

What about the, what about the credit unions? In this particular case, who owns the credit unions?

The members of the credit union themselves in this case are service members.

And so they really understand that, don't they? So when the CFPP walks into Navy or Naval Credit Naval Standard Credit Union and says we're gonna charge you money for the way that you've treated your people, who ends up paying the bill? I I don't think we made that very clear.

Service members and their families.

Service members and their families pay the fee and the penalty. It was there was there more than just a payback? Was there gonna be any kind of penalties or any costs involved in doing this in terms of responding to the CFPB demand?

They actually paid their penalty. We did not cancel that. It was the redress is what we canceled. So we basically froze it in time when we came in.

And so along with demanding that they redistribute some of the funds, they also there was a cost to the owners of the credit union for paying a penalty to the CFPB. What does the CFPB do with that money?

We put it in the civil uh penalty fund, civil monetary penalty fund uh for redress where sometimes a company that's bankrupt can't and has been a fraudulent actor uh can't pay their their their redress.

Thank you. Thank you, Mister Chairman.

Senator Reid.

Well thank you very much Mister Chairman, Mister Vote. We have a housing supply crisis in the United States which is obvious to everyone, uh yet the Trump administration is sitting on seven hundred and million dollars in home building funds mostly from the affordable housing trust fund and the capital magnet fund that could build or rehabilitate about sixty three thousand homes across the country and these programs are not funded by the tax pay they're funded from a portion of the profits of fannie mae and freddie mac and twenty two of my colleagues joined me in writing on june thursday to urge you to release these funds which you're holding Uh, will you commit to release these funds and when will you do it?

Uh, happy to look at that, did see your letter, and we will, happy to follow up and we're looking to expeditiously move on all of those apportionments, as quickly as we can.

How quickly is quickly?

Well, it's halfway through the fiscal year. We obviously wanna make sure that uh the funds get to the agency, that they can be spent.

You've been sitting on uh those funds now for more than a year. um and i doubt that you need much more time uh and i would urge you to respond quickly uh you know actually immediately uh you've also proposed a regulation to overhaul the federal grant making process that would effectively end merit-based decisions uh and give political appointees unprecedented control of billion dollars in federal grants and there have been three hundred and fifty thousand comments already about your proposal most of them i suspect are in opposition um in fact we've already seen the effects of this kind of approach to um decision making last month the trump administration began dismantling the uh nsf ocean observation initiative a critical real time monitoring of the oceans And the political appointees that made the decision clearly didn't know what they were doing, not understanding the science and uh were forced to quickly reverse their decision. So, how will this rule ensure that political litmus test won't be used to make grants?

Senator, I think that this rule is about ensuring that we have uh democratic control of the spending that is going out at executive branch agencies and so that when you have a policy official in charge of an agency based on them themselves being in a cabinet that those are the ones that are making the final call on how and what we're spending money on through the grant program. And I was up here last year, I think, I think you were there, talking about the rescissions process and one of the biggest questions I got was, well, it's, you know, Mister Director, why don't you just not spend it on this or that? You have an opportunity to to impose your own policy objectives and to the extent that that's a valid argument, this two CFR is part of that process. We wanna make sure that NIH is not spending money on gain of function research that contributed to the last pandemic just because Tony Fauci who was not a policy official of a political nature,

Excuse me. Excuse me.

decides that it's a a wise thing to do.

Excuse me. So you have a non-doctor, non-scientist making decisions about scientific research, which seems to me to be uh fairly uh bad approach uh let me move on

j in that case senator j.

let me move on

bhattacharya would be a scientist in a duck

let me move on uh i was uh the lead sponsor of military lending act based on my experience as a soldier and in february twenty twenty five i sent you a very simple letter asking for an explanation and i still not have a had a response in fact you're not at all very responsive In June twenty twenty five you testified to me at the appropriations committee that you specifically made military lending an enforcement priority. Well, let's look at the record. Before your tender, the CFPB took forty enforcement actions that yielded three hundred and sixty-three million dollars in relief for service members. You have taken only two enforcement actions, securing only six point seven five million dollars. And again, as Senator, uh, uh warren has pointed out you released the navy federal credit union from obligation to refund eighty million dollars in illegally charged fees to us service members and this argument that oh they'll all pay uh because they're to cooperative these people were denied uh funds and you said stop um we're not gonna pay them back you've reduced the office of service from forty seven employees to nine you've reduced the cfpb supervision staff by eighty five percent and you've cut the number of annual exams from hundreds to only seventy you are basically uh abandoning the troops and the soldiers sailors and airmen that are being exploited by payday lenders uh by all sorts of uh used car dealers and everything else And to me that's a shame. Because you'll probably be the first one to stand up and say how what you do for service members. You're not doing anything for service members. My time is expired.

Senator Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Director. Um. I I appreciate all your work. on reducing the number of rules and regulations. Um, for an agency to get rid of a rule of a rule of regulation regulation under normal procedure of the APA, how long does it take?

It takes um most of time over a year, quite some time.

Yes. Um, do we have rules and regulations that exist? that are in violation of the Supreme Court's decision in the West Virginia versus CPA case and Lowell Pert Bright.

Uh, possibly, Senator, n- w- one doesn't immediately come to mind, but the way that we have interpreted those two decisions would be the extremely cautious with dis- the discretion that is existent to law for instance, expanding to a larger participant in a market that the last director did and got cr a that's the kind of thing where we've used our caution greatly

well here's my suggestion as you i'm sure know mister director there is a um a good cause exception to uh the the the notice and comment requirements of the apa and and basically the apa says i think the words it uses if uh if there's a an existing rule and regulation that is contrary to the public interest. Uh, an agency doesn't have to go through the one year process. The agency can just unilaterally say, this is not in the public interest. Now, if an existing rule and regulation is in violation of Loper Bright and West Virginia V EPA, Why why couldn't our agencies take an aggressive posture and just say it violates the Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court? And it's it's it's it is no more.

We can, and in my OIRA hat, we have put out guidance to that effect to make sure the agencies know that. Here's the tension, just so we're all clear. The courts haven't necessarily caught up with that understanding of the statute. And so for those big rules that we are concerned about, that we want the opportunities to defend during our time in office, the tension is a strategic one about which ones we use and why, as a as a tool.

Well, they're gonna sue you anyway, no matter what you do. Um, because every one of these rules or regulations is making somebody money. Now, it's costing our business community a lot of money, which I think is which i know in part leads to higher prices because those costs are passed on but i i would strongly encourage you since you're gonna be sued anyway to to make use of the the good cause exception to the apa clearly if you look at a statute and it violates or or or a rule and it violates west virginia vpa or low per bright uh that's contrary to the public interest and there's your standard And I I I would strongly encourage you all to do that. How just if you can give me ballpark number, how how many rules and regulations have you gotten rid of or are trying to get rid of?

Well, right now we, the president gave us a goal of uh ten to one, deregulatory to to one. Uh, our stand we we achieved six in the first term, ten I thought might be a a harder challenge.

True.

We were we did one twenty-nine to one in the first term. and we think we're gonna have similar levels of success

is that is that in the thousands

yes yeah

ok thank you for that uh my second point is is uh doesn't require response but i want you to think about something um inflation is back now we all have our opinion about the cause uh i think it's more than just a conflict in iran But that's a debate for another day. We have to give people relief in the cost of living. I I really would ask you to consider through through the agency you're now director of or otherwise. Giving people some relief. On their medical debt being reported to the rating agencies. I I'm not saying wipe out their debt. I'm not saying that. It's legit. If it's. I don't know whether it's legitimate or not. Um, but nobody understands when you go to the hospital you get a bill and nobody can ever explain. But, but the the the the uh the collectors report that debt to the rating agencies which ruins people's credit, which makes it harder for the pay to pay the money back. Now my friends and and I'm coming, Mister Chairman.

Thank you so much.

Uh, I but I saw I I I've got ten seconds. Under the under the reed rule.

You just use up six of them, though.

Uh, I know. Uh, I really think you ought to give some people people some relief from medical debt. Italy, if not permanently temporarily. Just don't report it to the writing ages.

Sen

Just give them a break.

Senator

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You've been very indulgent.

Senator Warner.

Uh, I'd get the Kennedy thirty six second add-on.

Absolutely not.

Um, Doctor Bowden, it's good to see you again. Um, I know you're here and your role is acting at CFPB.

Um, let me state for the record, I totally disagree with your comments about this agency was weaponized, uh, your treatment of the workforce, you have gone through some dramatic reductions there. What's the current level of workforce at CFPB?

Ten seventy one.

Do you expect that, and, and everybody is now in, back in full time five days a week, I hope?

Uh, they are on their way back into, uh, five days a week. Uh, everyone's been working five days a week.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, we ha- ha- temporarily put on pause for confirmation of our nominee, uh, to, on the decision of pulling people back from the regions to DC.

OK. Well, you know, I I, extraordinary concern that you've cut the enforcement from four hundred and eighty-seven to just hundred and twenty-seven. This agency not always agreed with it, it put it, put billions back into Americans' pockets, Senator Kennedy. Um and when there have been abuses, and to walk away from that is is is really concerning to me. I'm not gonna get you unless I can also raise what is your obsessive concern about CDFIs? I mean uh CDFIs provide a source of funding for underserved communities. Secretary Besant uh assured me and when I and nineteen Democrats voted for his confirmation he was a supporter, this Congress continues to fund them. Uh, we have thirty four uh senators in CDFI caucus and chair, including the Senate uh, financier and the Senate Banking Committee chair. Um, why won't you release their money?

We have released the money for fiscal year twenty five and twenty six. The money that has not been apportioned is for twenty six and twenty seven.

You're saying to me,

For li-

and I w- I w- I w- please stay on the record, that all the money in twenty five has been released back to the actual CDFIs.

Twenty five and twenty six is.

And twenty six.

From OMB's perspective, has it been a portion to the treasury department? Can I, if I can answer your question, my concern, and we have had a dim view of this program as an administration, but there's tons of examples and I can go through them, of where in the last administration they were incredibly woke. And we have concerns with that. But also, as it pertains to this committee and the CFPB in general, CDFIs are exempt from ability to repent.

Well, excuse me, sir, sir. Yeah, you have, so all the fourteen Republicans, including Chairman Scott, including my co- my co-chair, Mike Crapo, including your treasury secretary, Scott Besant, have been supportive of helping underserved communities, and they have been supportive of all these woke institutions all over America?

I think there there are certainly bipartisan views on this program, but let me just give you an example. When you have five hundred thousand to inclusive action, which is suing the federal government to prevent ICE from investigating the fraudulent elusive funds to illegals. That is a major concern that we have. Now, we have released the files.

Love to see your documentation. I got two minutes left here. Cuz this is the the one I really wanna come to. Um, I respect your career in ba- in in government. You've done a lot of things in think tanks and you're serving the government in a lot of ways. Yeah, but your own comments, and this is very important to me, I'm sure Senator Van Hollen will raise it as well. We got a heck of a lot of federal workers. And the cuts from ill-informed Doge And a a smart Doge, I would have been supportive of. But this ill-informed Doge has had enormous effects. I think facts will show and history will show it actually costs the taxpayer money, and I'd love to work on a full audit of Doge. But here's the the real question I wanna get to. You said in your writings that you wanted to traumatize federal workforce. So, director, vote. As a former CEO myself.

That's not what I said, Senator. But I'm happy to clarify my previous statement.