A fascinating story is unfolding on Capitol Hill involving Congress's efforts to shield the payday loan industry and its mainly working poor customers from the crippling "protection" of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The news is that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has sided with the industry and its customers against the CFPB bureaucrats.
I read about this in two articles that are astonishingly (okay, maybe not so astonishingly) one-sided against Ms. Wasserman Schultz and in favor of the CFPB. The one from New York magazine has 3,800 Facebook shares and the one from the Huffington Post has 38,000 Facebook shares, which are a lot. To me the astonishing part is that people are outraged at the possibility that Congress — which, after all, was elected to write the laws — should decide this, rather than the CFPB, which, having been established by Congress via Dodd-Frank with (probably unconstitutional) funding from the Federal Reserve, is now (surprise!) totally unaccountable, to the point that even mainstream Democrats like Ms. Wasserman Schultz think it is ridiculous.
It's not clear to me whether Ms. Wasserman Schultz objects to the CFPB's approach on substantive grounds or because giving the CFPB, rather than Congress, jurisdiction over the issue would make this industry less fruitful fundraising ground. But regardless of her motive, it looks like she's on the right side of this one. She should wear the criticism she is taking on this one as a badge of honor.