Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding need for the President to address the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of transparency and accountability before confirming a new director:

“Later this week, the Senate will have a vote on whether or not the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should move forward with a director before addressing concerns that have been raised about the bureau’s lack of transparency or accountability to the American people.

“I understand through press reports that the President plans to make a big push for his nominee to the CFPB. But let me tell you something the President hasn’t done when it comes to this position: in the seven months since 44 Republicans sent the President a letter outlining some very serious and very reasonable concerns about it, he hasn’t done a thing to address these concerns — not a thing.

“If he’s picked up the phone to talk these issues over with anybody in our conference, I haven’t heard about it. If he’s put some thought into how he could ensure the perfectly legitimate concerns we raised in that letter are addressed, he hasn’t let us in on his game plan.

“Here’s what we asked for in that letter, which has now been signed by 45 Republican senators:

“All we asked for before we vote to confirm anybody to run the CFPB — regardless of their party affiliation, regardless of who the President is — are three clear, simple, commonsense reforms that would make sure that this new agency is accountable to the American people.

“First, replace the single Director with a board of directors that would oversee the Bureau.

“Under the deeply-flawed Dodd-Frank bill, the Director of the CFPB, by design, is set to lead one of the least accountable and most powerful agencies in Washington. What we’re saying is no single person who’s unaccountable to the American people should have that much power.

“We are asking for the same structure as the SEC, the CFTC, and the FDIC, the FTC, the NLRB, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission — the same structure we use anytime we give unelected bureaucrats new powers that need to be checked to protect against abuse.

“Two, subject the Bureau to the Congressional appropriations process.

“Currently, the CFPB is housed at the Federal Reserve and funded through a percentage of their annual budget, giving it a funding stream that’s completely unique in government, entirely without a check from the American people, and making it one of the least transparent agencies in Washington. If you like the level of accountability over at the Fed, you’ll love the CFPB.

“A journalist who wanted some information about the Fed’s lending practices recently had to sue it to find out. This is information not even Congress could have gotten on its own.

“If you ask me, the American people should be getting more transparency out of this administration not less. We don’t need any more unelected, unaccountable czars in Washington.

“Three, we asked for a safety-and-soundness check for the prudential financial regulators who oversee the safety and soundness of financial institutions. This would help ensure that we’re not inadvertently causing bank failures through excessive regulations.

“So our proposal would do nothing more than give congressional committees a proper level of oversight and accountability over this new Bureau, and ensure its decisions were subject to the checks and balances that were meant to be inherent in our system, something we owe the American people.

“Everybody supports strong and effective consumer protection, but the CFPB in its current form cannot stand. In its current form, the CFPB could easily be used for political purposes at the expense of access to credit, job creation, economic growth, and financial stability.

“What’s needed is transparency and accountability. That’s all we’ve asked for. And the President has done nothing to address these concerns. Instead, he’s ignored these perfectly legitimate concerns. And now he’s suddenly making a push to confirm his nominee — because it fits into some picture he wants to paint about who the good guys and the bad guys are in Washington.

“So once again he’s going to use the Senate floor this week to stage a little political theater.

“He’s setting up a vote he knows will fail so he can show up afterward and say he’s shocked.

“This is what passes as leadership right now in the White House. And it’s unfortunate.

“Look: We all believe Americans need access to financial products that aren’t rigged against them. We just think that nobody should be above oversight — including the overseers. And we don’t think that a bureau designed to watch Wall Street, should have the ability to squeeze out hiring on Main Street. And frankly, the President’s refusal to even consider our calls for oversight and transparency only serve to deepen our concerns about the agency. So once again we’d like to call on the President to take these concerns seriously and work with us on achieving something positive together.

“The fact of the matter is the CFPB needs a drastic overhaul before any nominee can be confirmed. This won’t come as a surprise to anybody at the White House. And our doors remain open.”