A House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday about data collection by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau quickly escalated into partisan bickering about the agency’s handling of personal data.
Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, a member of the committee, questioned the witnesses about the claim that the CFPB did not collect any personal identifying information that could be compromised by pointing out that the agency collects identifying markers from consumers such as gender, age and ethnicity.
“If we include those three elements, are those things that can be used to identify an individual?” Tipton asked.
Committee witness Deepak Gupta, a former bureau official, said the agency took necessary steps to ensure this information was protected.
The bureau, which was formed in 2011 after passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is an independent federal agency tasked with enforcing federal consumer protection laws and providing consumers with clear information about their financial decisions.
Critics of the agency say the data it collects – including student loan, credit card and mortgage information – leaves consumers susceptible to privacy and transparency concerns.
A 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office found that the CFPB collected, in part, data on an estimated 700,000 automobile sales a month, data on 5.5 million private student loans, and data on around 173 million mortgage loans.
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a witness before the committee, called the agency “dictatorial” and said the data collected by the CFPB exceeded the mandates set by the Dodd-Frank Act.
“There’s no better example of the corruption of power than this agency, which is totally secret, totally unaccountable, spending vast amounts of money and having huge cost overruns, and doing whatever it wants to, whomever it feels like doing it to,” Gingrich said.
But Democratic representatives turned the tables on Gingrich by attacking his work advising the U.S. Consumer Coalition, an anti-CFPB organization. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., implied that U.S. Consumer Coalition was formed to undermine the new consumer protection agency and that the focus on data collection was an attempt to push back against the agency’s consumer protection efforts.
“The Coalition is funded by what industries?” Waters asked Gingrich at one point.
“I don’t know,” Gingrich replied.
egraham@durangoherald.com. Edward Graham is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.
