On the recordMay 8, 2018
I thank the chairman for yielding. I rise today in support of the Congressional Review Act resolution to disapprove the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 2013 auto finance guidance. The Dodd-Frank financial control law explicitly exempted auto dealers from the Bureau's supervision and regulation. However, this did not deter former Director of the Bureau Richard Cordray from trying to regulate this industry, circumventing the legislative intent of Congress through a backdoor guidance. Not only did the Bureau lack the legal authority to issue such regulation, it also based its justification for the guidance on a flawed statistical methodology. That methodology, which supposedly provided evidence of widespread discrimination of auto lenders against minorities, determined the probability of an individual's race and ethnicity merely based upon last names and ZIP Codes. According to a 2014 study, only 50 percent of Asians and 24 percent of African Americans were correctly identified by the Bureau's flawed methodology. My friend and colleague from Illinois, a gentleman who self- identifies as a scientist, says that statistical uncertainties are always present. But the truth is that the Bureau's own records show that the Bureau designed a remuneration process that ensured that 235,000 consumers would receive remuneration checks, even though the Bureau knew that White consumers were not discriminated against on account of race.…
