Scoop: Financial Services Republicans want new CFPB Director “as soon as possible”
“Rohit Chopra’s tenure at the CFPB has been a disaster,” Rep. Andy Barr (R., Ky.), told the Washington Reporter.
Amid President Donald Trump’s hiring freeze and in-person work mandate, one Biden administration holdover has become a “chameleon,” top Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee told the Washington Reporter — Rohit Chopra, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and several want him gone immediately.
“Rohit Chopra’s tenure at the CFPB has been a disaster,” Rep. Andy Barr (R., Ky.), told the Washington Reporter. “His regulatory overreach has stifled financial innovation and increased the cost for financial services and products for American consumers. With President Trump’s return, it’s time to clean house. Chopra should resign immediately so we can restore accountability and pro-growth policies at the CFPB.”
Chopra, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) protégé, has attempted to make himself more likeable toward Trump — but he isn’t fooling the lawmakers who interact with his agency. “I hope the change at CFPB is done as soon as possible,” Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.) told the Reporter. “The ever-changing chameleon named Rohit Chopra is now trying to sound like he is full-blown MAGA when it comes to the debanking of conservatives. Give me a break.”
Rep. John Rose (R., Tenn.) added to the Reporter that “Director Chopra has been so disliked that I think even he thought he would've been fired by now.”
Barr, Huizenga, and Rose are senior Republicans on the Financial Services Committee, and their concerns about Chopra — and desires to see him gone — are echoed by many in the banking community.
Mick Mulvaney, who served as CFPB Director during Trump’s first term, wrote shortly before Biden left office that “Rohit Chopra has been burning the midnight oil making sure that people get exactly the sort of government they just voted against…[and] has proposed, issued or finalized at least five new rulemakings since the election. He has filed more lawsuits than that. He continues to hound private equity over its passive ownership — emphasis on passive — of FDIC-insured banks. His justification — for not only proposing new regulation, but for also breaking all sort of rules regarding pre-determining the outcome of the rulemaking — is that large asset managers were a ‘natural oligopoly.’”
Mulvaney, a frequent critic of Chopra’s, added that Chopra “cites no evidence of injury to consumers — maybe he forgot what the ‘C’ stands for in ‘CFPB.’ In fact, consumers seem to like passive asset managers. Chopra certainly does, at least when it comes to investing his own money.”
Others seconded these criticisms of Chopra in remarks to the Reporter. “We're hopeful that an Executive Order to reset the CFPB and fire Director Chopra will be on President Trump's desk to sign soon,” Weston Loyd, a spokesman for the Consumer Bankers Association, told the Reporter. “The longer Director Chopra stays, the harder it will be for this pro-growth administration to undo the politically-driven, government-price setting agenda that former President Biden's appointee has engaged in over the last several years at the Bureau.”