Duffy bill would curb high Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pay rates

U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) on Thursday introduced bicameral legislation to bring Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) employees’ pay rates in line with those of other executive branch workers.

The CFPB Pay Fairness Act of 2017, H.R. 4499, would amend the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to rein in the agency’s pay and require the agency director to set rates reflecting the federal government’s General Schedule pay rates. Those rates would be effective for all CFPB employees 90 days after the legislation’s enactment.

“The CFPB is dangerously unaccountable to the American people because Democrats intentionally designed it that way,” said Duffy, a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “As a result, they can act as a bully to small banks and credit unions, push a far-left agenda, and spend lavishly on bureaucrat salaries that are obscenely higher than the vast majority of public servants.”

The CFPB, created in 2010 after the global financial crisis, oversees the federal financial laws that protect consumers from unfair practices by companies.

U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) introduced a companion bill in the Senate on Thursday.

“The need for Congress to bring accountability to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is long overdue and the bureau’s lavish spending on employee salaries is a key example of why,” Enzi said.

“There are hundreds of employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau making more than governors, Supreme Court justices and senior White House Staff, and Congress lacks the usual constitutional checks to rein in this behavior,” Enzi added. “Although it might just sound like common sense, this bill would ensure the bureau is keeping employees’ salaries in line with the regular government pay scale. Hopefully this is the start of many needed reforms.”

Duffy added, “The agency must be reined in and held accountable, and the Pay Fairness Act, which sets basic pay rates in accordance with the federal government’s General Schedule, is an important step in giving the American people a say in how this rogue agency functions.”