A partisan fight is brewing in Washington, D.C., after a liberal advocacy group released a report yesterday detailing how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned more than $240 million to consumers in 10 specific states — which are all home to Republicans seeking to “defund and defang” the Bureau. Rep. Bill Huizenga [R-Mich.] attacked the report, leading the advocacy group to say the lawmaker is more interested in representing “the scammers, not the scammed.”
A copy of the report, released by Accountable.US can be accessed by clicking here.
The report makes a correlation between the donations that lawmakers in 10 states — Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin — have taken from the financial services industry and their positions that the CFPB should be weakened or completely eliminated. While those lawmakers are working on their plans, the Bureau has provided $240 million in restitution to consumers in those states who have been victimized or scammed between 2012 and 2022, according to the report.
“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,” said Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US’s program on economic security and corporate power, in a published report. “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.”
Rep. Huizenga is one of a number of members of Congress who wrote an amicus brief supporting the argument that the CFPB’s funding structure should be subject to the Congressional appropriations process. A spokesperson for Rep. Huizenga noted that the amount of money returned in Michigan amounted to $42 per year to approximately 0.48% of the state’s residents.
Accountable.US issued a statement of its own in response to Rep. Huizenga’s comments, saying “Congressman Huizenga is so desperate to keep the checks coming from predatory lenders and greedy banks, he doesn’t realize how out of touch it sounds mocking the CFPB for returning stolen money to hard-working Michigan families.”
