The best consumer protection is consumer choice. When banks, credit unions, and financial technology companies compete for Americans’ business, consumers benefit from better products, lower costs, greater convenience, and expanded access to credit. But competition cannot thrive when Washington changes the rules every four years.
For too long, that has been the story at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Congress gave the CFPB broad authority without enough accountability, allowing regulatory policy to swing dramatically from one administration to the next.
One administration expands the CFPB’s reach through novel legal interpretations, guidance, enforcement actions, and aggressive supervision. The next pulls those policies back. Another election comes along, and the cycle begins again. That is not durable consumer protection. It is regulatory whiplash.
And the people paying the price are not just large banks on Wall Street. They are the banks and credit unions across Kentucky that finance a farmer’s equipment, help a family buy its first home, or extend credit to a Main Street business.
When the CFPB changes its interpretation of the law based on who occupies the White House, local lenders spend more time trying to predict Washington’s next move and less time serving customers. Consumers ultimately bear the cost through fewer choices, higher prices, and reduced access to credit.
Under President Donald Trump, CFPB leaders, including Mick Mulvaney, Kathy Kraninger, and Russell Vought, worked to rein in many of the excesses that had come to define the CFPB, while restoring greater accountability and clearer rules.
Those reforms matter. But executive action alone is not enough. A future director can reverse them with the stroke of a pen and restart the cycle. Congress created the CFPB. Congress must establish the rules of the road.
The Consumer Financial Protection Accountability and Reform Act of 2026 puts permanent guardrails around the CFPB’s authority, so consumer protection does not change every time political power changes hands in Washington.
Congress should exercise the power of the purse by bringing the CFPB into the regular appropriations process and subjecting its spending and priorities to congressional scrutiny. An independent inspector general would strengthen oversight, while meaningful cost-benefit analysis would require regulators to consider how major decisions affect consumers, small businesses, competition, and access to credit.
Congress must also define the limits of the CFPB’s authority more clearly. Broad terms such as “abusive” should not become blank checks for regulators to stretch the law based on the philosophy of the director. Financial institutions should know where the legal line is before the government accuses them of crossing it.
Binding requirements should be established openly, with clear standards and public input — not announced for the first time through an enforcement action. That matters to Kentucky’s banks and credit unions. A local lender should be able to read the law, understand its obligations, comply, and get back to serving its community.
The same principle applies to innovation. Companies will not invest in new technologies and financial products if regulators can abruptly reinterpret old laws to govern products Congress never contemplated. When genuinely new authority is needed, Congress should debate it and provide it.
Supervision should also focus on real risks to consumers, not on duplicative examinations and conflicting demands from multiple regulators. Better coordination among the CFPB, prudential regulators, and state authorities can protect consumers without wasting resources.
Fraud and deliberate violations of consumer protection laws should be punished. But enforcement should enforce the law, not invent it. Penalties should be proportional, institutions should have incentives to correct problems, and the CFPB should remain focused on actual consumer harm.
These reforms do not weaken consumer protection. They make it durable. Consumer protection should not depend on who happens to be running the CFPB, and financial institutions should not have to relearn the rules every four years.
A Kentucky farmer applying for a loan, a family seeking a mortgage, or an entrepreneur opening a small business does not care which political party controls the CFPB. They want access to competitive financial products from institutions they trust under rules that are fair, transparent, and consistent.
Congress has allowed too much regulatory policy to fluctuate with presidential administrations. It is time for Congress to take responsibility.
Clear laws. Clear boundaries. Accountability to the American people. Strong enforcement against wrongdoing. And a competitive marketplace where banks, credit unions, and innovators can serve their customers without having to guess what Washington will decide tomorrow.
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Congress’s task is to ensure that the CFPB remains accountable, transparent, and focused on consumers, not on regulatory expansion for its own sake.
That is how we protect consumers for the long term.
Andy Barr is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives serving the people of Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District.