Exclusive–Iain Murray: ‘We Need to Eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’

Iain Murray, vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Breitbart News that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an unconstitutional agency that needs to be eliminated.

Iain Murray explained that the CFPB’s prepaid debit card rule is another example that the agency is out of control. Murray explained:

This is another example of what happens when you have an unconstitutional agency that allows them to rule without regard to the unintended consequences. The prepaid card rule is 1,700 pages long, twice as long as the Dodd-Frank law that created the CFPB. It will kill off the prepaid card industry. It might even kill products like Venmo or Bitcoin which is very different compared to prepaid cards. This regulation should be eliminated by the Congressional Review Act.

Murray labeled the CFPB a fundamentally flawed government agency. He said, “The CFPB is an unaccountable and unconstitutional agency. It has a director that is not answerable to the President or Congress. Congress has no power of the purse; the Federal Reserve funds the CFPB, not Congress. Richard Cordray has never been denied a request for financing the CFPB.”

CFPB Director Richard Cordray spent $215 million on its new headquarters. During a congressional hearing Representative Ann Wagner (R-MO) asked who authorized the lavish spending. Cordray said, “Why does that matter to you?”

The CEI vice president explained that we need to eliminate the consumer protection agency. “We need to eliminate the CFPB completely, and restore consumer protection to the FTC. They wanted to strip the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to protect consumer finance and give it to people who could act in the interests of the left. We need to eliminate the agency,” Murray said.