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>Its structure included a director that could not be fired by the President except for cause, and the ability to request funding from the Federal Reserve rather
by voldacar 3y ago
>Its structure included a director that could not be fired by the President except for cause, and the ability to request funding from the Federal Reserve rather than the United States Congress
I mean, that does sound pretty insane
- gmerc 3y agoDoes it in the light of how the US government actually works?
- leereeves 3y agoTrying to prevent some future elected government from changing course? I can see the appeal, but yeah, it sounds like a bad precedent.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MarkMarine 3y agoCongress could always change the laws that govern it. This just prevents a single executive from replacing the head and neutering the agency as the tides change
- arcbyte 3y agoThat's not a desirable feature in a representative democracy.
- rightbyte 3y agoI think you kinda want some institutional inertia though.
- MarkMarine 3y agoYour representatives are in congress
- maxerickson 3y agoNot having a unitary executive seems perfectly compatible with representative democracy.
- ipaddr 3y agoSimilar to supreme court judges
- turquoisevar 3y agoYou’d be surprised how few representative democracies suffer from the same whiplash inducing pendulum effect the US suffers from. In most western nations the top civil servant and all those below them are non-partisan career civil servants that keep the ship running at all times and have better employment protections than the average employee (which already requires for cause in those countries). A new Minister’s (Secretary in US parlance) role is mainly that of someone who plots a course and the civil servants in the ministry try to follow it. As a side note, the concept or “government shutdown” is also entirely foreign in those countries, if not outright ridiculous.
- butlerm 3y agoThe president and the entire executive branch have an obligation to faithfully execute the law. For all officers of the United States, that is a sworn obligation.
- gmerc 3y agoAnd how has that been going with Trump? This feels like a prayer at this point
- leereeves 3y agoOf course that's appealing when it's something you want, but what would think of it if the Republicans win the House, Senate, and Presidency again (as they did in 2016) and do something similar? For example, they might create an Administration of Land Management with authority over all extraction rights on federal land, funded by fees paid for those rights, and with a director the President cannot remove except for cause. And it wouldn't be possible for Democrats to change that until they too won the House, Senate, and Presidency at the same time. A government full of agencies like that would make elections mostly irrelevant, and things would change only when one party won everything.
- MarkMarine 3y agoSomeone said it earlier, but this horror you’re describing is the case in plenty of developed countries.
- leereeves 3y agoMany of those countries have parliamentary systems where the chief executive is always from the majority party (or coalition) in parliament, so they never have the divided governments that are so common in the US. Many also have a House of Lords or Bundesrat or something similar that is not elected by the people, whose purpose is to make the government less democratic. We should not try to be more like those governments. Of those that remain, how many have agencies not subject to the chief executive like the CFPB?
- voldacar 3y agoCreating a separate arm of the government accountable to neither the president nor congress seems like the legal equivalent of a rootkit
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MarkMarine 3y agoIts structured this way because it was a reaction to the 08 crash and subsequent bailout of wall street. Seems to be the only reform that came out of that area, and measured against how much the banks chafe against the CFPB, I’d say it was working. This would also challenge the federal reserve structure.
- butlerm 3y agoThe Federal Reserve started as a government sponsored banking cartel to solve a specific problem. It was not intended to be a regulatory agency until not that many years ago, and is not appropriate for the job. Bank and consumer finance regulation should fall under the Treasury Department or the Commerce Department somewhere. There are agencies that have similar responsibilities now. Those agencies should be regulating the banks, not the banks or some subsidiary of a banking cartel regulating themselves. The recent bank failures are a case in point.
- majormajor 3y ago"director that could not be fired by the President except for cause" This is the same as the FTC and others. "This Court, as the majority acknowledges, has sustained the constitutionality of the FTC and similar in- dependent agencies. See ante, at 2, 13–16. The for-cause protections for the heads of those agencies, the Court has found, do not impede the President’s ability to perform his own constitutional duties, and so do not breach the separation of powers." https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-7_n6io.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-7_n6io.pdf
- pyuser583 3y agoIt’s different from the FTC because its funding comes directly from the federal reserve. So it’s independent of both the President and Congress. It’s more independent than many courts. What could possibly go wrong?
- kadoban 3y ago> What could possibly go wrong? They might accidentally get something done that helps people?
- tivert 3y ago>> What could possibly go wrong? > They might accidentally get something done that helps people? Since you're missing the point: make me dictator, so I can finally get stuff done that helps people. Too much independence is a recipe for serious problems, even if (theoretically) it could be used accomplish major things.
- kadoban 3y agoIf there's serious problems, then Congress can act. The structure just makes it harder for Republicans to kill it quietly for an unsupportable reason.
- 3y ago
- rgbrenner 3y agoThe CFPB is part of the federal reserve and both of those rules also apply to the federal reserve. It makes sense that a bureau of the Fed would follow Fed rules. The Fed is tasked with financial regulation, and did some of the work of the CFPB before it was created. By design the Fed is independent, including funding, from Congress. If you're curious why, there's lots of history around how and why a central bank was created... dating all the way bank to Andrew Hamilton.