The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that a key Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (Banking Committee) provision that would eliminate all funding for the CFPB cannot be included in the massive budget reconciliation bill now being prepared for Senate consideration.
Under the existing funding structure, the CFPB may draw up to 12% of the Federal Reserve’s inflation-adjusted total operating expenses in 2009. The Banking Committee Republicans had intended to recommend reducing that cap to 0%, according to proposed legislative language.
The Senate rules-keeper ruled that that provision is outside the scope of the reconciliation process and therefore not immune from a filibuster. As a result, it would take 60 votes to include it in the bill to avoid a filibuster—a threshold that Republicans are highly unlikely to reach.
The reconciliation process can be used to make changes in revenue and spending and may not be used to make other public policy changes.
However, the parliamentarian ruled that Scott’s proposal to delay implementation of the Section 1071 rule, a Dodd-Frank rule that requires financial institutions to report information contained in loan applications submitted by women-owned, minority-owned and LGBTQI+-owned small businesses, may be included in the budget bill.
According to press reports, Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott said GOP members “remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions in the larger bill.
Democrats hailed the parliamentarian’s decision that the CFPB funding provision cannot be included in the bill.
Senate Banking Committee ranking Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the CFPB provision and others in the bill “are a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires. Democrats fought back, and we will keep fighting back against this ugly bill.”
And Senate Banking Committee ranking Democrat Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. said, “As much as Senate Republicans would prefer to throw out the rule book and advance their families lose and billionaires win agenda, there are rules that must be followed and Democrats are making sure those rules are enforced. We will continue examining every provision in this Great Betrayal of a bill and will scrutinize it to the furthest extent.”
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