WASHINGTON — Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the new chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told reporters that answers on Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra's continued leadership of the bureau are "imminent" from the Trump administration.
Scott told a small group of reporters that he looks "forward to a blockbuster announcement sometime soon as relates to who will be over at the CFPB."
Chopra, who many in the banking industry expected to be fired
"It'd be nice for us to have someone, and I've asked the administration, please fire the guy," Scott said. "I think we're going to be happy with the answer they give us and the person they give us as well."
Scott said that the delay is likely due to the Vacancies Act, which says that the first deputy at an agency is the acting agency head by default, although it allows the president to select an acting director who has been previously Senate confirmed. That curtails President Donald Trump's ability to fill that spot at the CFPB.
"So I think, a) answers will be imminent, b) they will be public and c) we will be happy," Scott said.
Scott also said he would support limiting the CFPB's funding as a way of paying for
As both the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a member of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Scott holds a uniquely powerful position in the tax debate, especially when it comes to financial regulatory agencies and the financial industry.
"The truth is we should take a panoramic view of the CFPB and ask ourselves, 'Are those functions being done somewhere else in the alphabet soup of regulation?'" Scott said. "The answer is yes, and so you should, I think, focus on both the activities of the CFPB and the funding of the CFPB, and where there's duplication within the CFPB, maybe let someone else do that."
Scott also doubled down on
"Having this hearing on debanking, it's the first leap in the right direction, but it's not the last leap in the right direction," Scott said.
The Senate Banking Committee said that the hearing would include the CEO and founder of Anchorage Digital, Nathan McCauley, and Evan Hafner, the owner of a coffee chain who's spoken publicly about its experience with the banking industry, as witnesses.
Rhetoric around debanking has picked up steam in the last few months, after Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the crypto-centric venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz,
Trump has also
"I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives," Trump said to Moynihan during the Davos event. "Because conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that includes a place called Bank of America."
Scott, in response to a question from American Banker about banks' and regulators' obligation to comply with and enforce anti-money laundering laws, said that issues with debanking are separate from those concerns.
"I don't think that was the nexus for their decisions," he said. "Giving them an out on the Bank Secrecy Act is not even a stretch, it would be a leap into Neverland."
Scott left the door open to legislation that would address debanking, but didn't specify what that would look like.
"I think the first step is bringing it to the public so the public understands that yes, all the concerns you heard about during campaign time wasn't just campaign rhetoric, it was real," he said. "Number two, it's understanding the path forward to putting pressure on the regulators, and number three, are there remedies in law that should be a part of the nation's approach to fairness that we need to get to."
