OPINION

A Pen and A Phone – No Idle Threat

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Who needs Congress when you’ve got a horde of unelected bureaucrats willing and able to write law and do the will of the president? Congress can’t decide on anything anyway. They’re always arguing. It takes great leadership to circumvent Congress and really get things done. Good job President Obama, you’ve built quite a legacy of destruction.

Here’s just another example of the Obama administration’s government overreach that is systemic. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established thanks to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act becoming operational in 2012. In just four short years, the CFPB has become an agency to fear. With very little accountability and the website says, “The mission of the CFPB is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives.”

The CFPB claims its mission is to “make rules more effective” and has since turned that into the ability to unilaterally write law. Next month they are about to do it again. This time they will effectively stomp on an incredibly viable and time honored financial industry. Specifically going after online and short term loans. The new rule proposed by the CFPB will do two things. Make America less competitive at home and abroad and significantly hurt the economy.

The new “rule” will overwhelmingly hurt our middle class, those struggling to make ends meet, and our millennials. The significant power grab aside, our people will lose options they now enjoy. Simply put, businesses will be regulated out of business and people who used their services left hanging out to dry.

To access monies online or in short term situations a consumer would now be faced with a mountain of paperwork larger than what it takes to qualify for a $500K mortgage. Also, the new metrics to actually qualify for these loans is “enhanced” to become so confusing that no reasonable lending institution or consumer could navigate it, let alone qualify for it.

This undue regulatory burden will succeed in the true mission: hurt the online and short term financial industry and drive consumers back into the waiting arms of the big banks.

Who is beholden to the big banks? Politicians, of course. Crony-capitalism is alive and well. As Obama is in his waning days of his administration he is desperate to leave a lasting legacy of accomplishments. Since he has failed in many ways to do that by using our congressional system, it must be done by regulatory fiat. This attack on free market loans is an attack on consumers.

The CFPB claims to be looking out for consumers, while hurting the economy and taking away a much-needed financial option many use in times of real need. This agency is operating totally outside of their mandate at the direct direction of the White House. Payback is an important part of our corrupted system and this is as pure an example of it as you could see.

Where is our media? Nothing to report here, because it would go against the narrative that President Obama cares for the people living paycheck-to-paycheck, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Where are our congressmen when we need them? Where are the defenders of our Constitution? Silent. Which means they are part of the problem.