If at first you don’t succeed … that must be tattooed somewhere on Sen. John Kennedy [R-La.] who recently reintroduced legislation in the Senate seeking to change “the unfair way” that employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are compensated.
A copy of S.2925, called the CFPB Pay Fairness Act of 2023 introduced by Sen. Kennedy and co-sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis [R-N.C.] can be accessed by clicking here.
Sen. Kennedy previously introduced this legislation, back in 2021. It never made it out of committee, which is likely what will happen this time around, too, given that Democrats control the Senate.
If enacted, the bill would require the CFPB to pay its employees according to the same standards that apply to employees working at other agencies of the federal government. The CFPB would have 90 days after the bill is enacted to update its compensation guidelines.
“The CFPB’s funding scheme reveals much about what’s wrong with big government,” Sen. Kennedy said, in a statement. “Our bill would do away with the CFPB’s unfair pay advantage and begin to put the agency’s staff on equal footing with other hardworking federal employees.”
Because the funding structure of the CFPB is not subject to the Congressional appropriations process, the compensation structure is not required to follow the same guidelines as other federal agencies. This means that there are employees working at the Bureau whose salaries are comparable to members of Congress and cabinet secretaries, Sen. Kennedy noted. When he previously introduced this legislation in 2021, Sen. Kennedy noted that salaries at the CFPB were capped at $259,500 per year, while cabinet secretaries earned $221,400. At the time, about half of the CFPB’s employees were making more than $170,000 per year, according to Sen. Kennedy. The average salary for an employee in the federal government is about $71,000 per year.
