U.S. Senator Katie Britt recently joined Ranking Member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina) of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Andy Barr (R-Kentucky), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy, Representative Bill Huizenga (R-Michigan), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and a bicameral group of 132 members of Congress in filing an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, et al., v. Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited, et al.
U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) has also joined the amicus brief.
The brief urges the Supreme Court to uphold the Fifth Circuit’s decision that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) funding structure is unconstitutional and to make the Bureau’s funding subject to congressional appropriations like most of the federal government.
“The Constitution clearly grants Congress power over the appropriations process. The CFPB should be no exception but has been operating outside of this lawful process with little oversight or taxpayer accountability,” said Senator Britt. “This amicus brief reaffirms the importance of spending public funds as directed by Congress and ‘not according to the individual favor of Government agents.’ The current funding scheme utilized by the CFPB is unsustainable and unconstitutional, and I urge the Court to uphold the Fifth Circuit’s decision.”
“Thankfully, our government has a system of checks and balances, one of which includes congressional oversight and the power of the purse—appropriations,” Sen. Scott said. “In these important and trusted roles, we analyze and scrutinize the executive branch’s actions on behalf of the American taxpayer, so that the voices of the country’s citizens are heard and their viewpoints reflected. Unfortunately, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—or the CFPB—is a notable exception. It is not accountable to Congress or the American taxpayer through the appropriations process, and it routinely and brazenly acts outside of the scope of its authority.”
The brief states, “The Court need not determine which particular aspect of the CFPB’s funding scheme is the most problematic. This is the easy case. The CFPB ‘is in an entirely different league’ from other entities when it comes to its insulation from Congress… to the point that the CFPB currently operates as ‘a sort of junior-varsity Congress’ setting its own funding levels in perpetuity… Such insulation means that Congress itself is not determining the CFPB’s funding. The Court should affirm the judgment below, which will return the matter of the CFPB’s funding to the normal political and legislative channels, as Article I and the Appropriations Clause require.”
Questions about the constitutionality of the CPFB have followed the agency since its founding in the early years of the Obama Presidency. Then U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) said. “For years, I have argued that supporters of Dodd-Frank sacrificed our Constitution in the name of bureaucratic independence,” Shelby stated. “While the court’s ruling today is a victory for accountability, it is meaningless without a President who is willing to rein in the unmatched authority of the CFPB’s Director.”
Conservatives are optimistic that the Court will rule to place the troubled agency under congressional oversight through the budgeting process.
Katie Britt was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
