Minnesota lawmakers, attorney general warn dismantling of CFPB will leave consumers exposed

Sen. Matt Klein, chair of the Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee, and Attorney General Keith Ellison told a committee hearing that recent actions disabling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) risk removing key protections for Minnesotans who use credit cards, mortgages, student loans, virtual currency and bank accounts.

Klein said the CFPB — an independent federal agency created after the 2008 financial crisis — has “returned $20,000,000,000 for over 200,000,000 Americans.” He and other senators said that a recent effort by the federal administration to halt CFPB operations and by outside actors to access agency systems has left a regulatory gap that state offices cannot fully fill. “We cannot let the fox guard the hen house,” Klein said.

Attorney General Keith Ellison told the committee the CFPB performs supervisory work — including subpoena and discovery authority for large, systemically important banks — that the state lacks. “We…