This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 19th, 2004.

I'm Keelip Brown.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been the subject of controversy since before it was created more than a decade ago.

Its unique structure, funding, and accountability were all at issue.

Now some clarity on another element of the agency's operations does the funding structure

violate the appropriations clause.

The Supreme Court says no.

Cato's Tommy Berry and Jennifer Schullp discuss the case.

All right, Jen, first and foremost, what is most controversial about the CFPB

seems to be its unique management and funding structure and

those have been longstanding issues. Why was this agency designed in this way?

Well, I think it's interesting because there's a lot of controversial things about the

CFPB, one of which being its structure.

It was designed with the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 to be an independent agency.

We throw that word around a lot and it means a couple of different things depending on what agency you're talking about but the specific design

for the CFPB initially was that its director would not be directly accountable to the president

would only be able to be removed by the president for cause and that cause could not just be it's a new president and that the

funding source of the CFPB would not be directly appropriated by Congress every year.

In fact, the CFPB gets its funding from the Federal Reserve and is allowed to draw a certain amount of money from the Federal Reserve up to a statutory cap in order to fund its operations.

The CFPB is controversial for a lot of reasons though. It has a very broad mandate,

consumer financial protection, and that covers, depending on who you talk to, just about everything that a consumer might touch that has to do with money.

It covers money, payday lenders, it covers certain aspects of housing mortgage loans.

...