Pat McHenry

I want to commend you for that outreach, because without that outreach, we could not have gotten a bipartisan product.

Well, that, 'help,' has had a negative effect on consumer protection.

But I just want to close here. So in your view, guidance is not legally binding. Is that true?

We have other regulators that have been doing this stuff for 100 years, and your approach at the CFPB is novel.

So, you would tell folks who look at new guidance that was issued maybe this morning, that has no new force of law, no new obligation on them, that it is just guidance?

Are those legally enforceable, though? Is that guidance legally enforceable?

I raised this last April about regulation-by-press-release. In your first 6 months, you issued 49 press releases.

Next month, there will be a new Majority in the House of Representatives. We look forward to more oversight.

Why wouldn't the next Director, with a politically-different persuasion, not abuse his or her powers with the precedent you have set?

I want to congratulate you on your 4 years as Chair.

Until we change course away from failed progressivism, which is really regressive, working families will find it harder and harder to afford their daily lives.

The hard truth is that the liberal ideology of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats... prevents them from solving this issue.

I don't think that working families have an extra 10,000 bucks laying around.

A doubling down of failed housing policies is not the answer. We need innovative solutions.

The Biden Administration has exacerbated price instability and the cost of consumer goods going up.

Since Democrats took control of Washington, the cost of everything has gone up: food, energy, healthcare, and, yes, housing, the topic of this hearing, are all much more expensive today than they were just 2 years ago.

For more than a year, Republicans have been sounding the alarm about the Democrats' reckless fiscal agenda and its impact on households and job creators.

And we will certainly, with the incoming Republican Majority, prioritize housing and financial stability next Congress, and put a great emphasis on that.

Let's talk about the main thing. The main thing here is the economy, the state of the economy.

Instead of focusing on what your institutions do best, providing capital and serving customers, you are here.

I disagree with this hearing because it is theater, not oversight.

We have our public policy work cut out for us still, Madam Chairwoman, and while we have made strides, we have more strides to make.

It doesn't seem like that should be sound public policy, or it shouldn't be a sound policy outcome.

Is it accurate to say that when one bank terminates a customer's account through, 'de-risking,' it is not really de-risking at all, but it is re-risking?

So, the customer still needs to be banked regardless of the risk, correct?