Why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Funding Structure Is Unconstitutional

“A three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled this week that the CFPB’s structure is unconstitutional because Congress has no control over the agency’s budget, which is funded entirely by the Federal Reserve. Under the terms of Dodd-Frank, the CFPB is entitled to receive a budget totaling up to 12 percent of the Federal Reserve’s annual operating expenses, and the Federal Reserve is not allowed to refuse the CFPB’s requests for funding.
 “Congress’s decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the Bureau, violates the Constitution’s structural separation of powers,” Judge Cory Wilson wrote in this week’s ruling.”  


“”Congress did not merely cede direct control over the Bureau’s budget by insulating it from annual or other time-limited appropriations. It also ceded indirect control by providing that the Bureau’s self-determined funding be drawn from a source that is itself outside the appropriations process—a double insulation from Congress’s purse strings that is ‘unprecedented’ across the government,” Wilson wrote in the court’s ruling. “Even among self-funded agencies, the Bureau is unique. The Bureau’s perpetual self-directed, double-insulated funding structure goes a significant step further than that enjoyed by the other agencies on offer.””
https://reason.com/2022/10/21/why-the-consumer-financial-protection-bureaus-funding-structure-is-unconstitutional/

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