CFPB “Structurally Unconstitutional”

the US Court of Appeals from the DC Circuit today found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was “structurally unconstitutional.”

The offending structure consists of an independent agency with a single, all-powerful executive director. The Court found that structure fell between two stools – an agency with a single head needs to be accountable to the President, while an independent agency needs to have internal checks and balances by having a multi-member commission format like the SEC and others...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of checks and balances violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. Its director is like a czar. He is not accountable to anyone, and can’t be fired even if voters elect a president with different ideas about how to protect consumers...

the Bureau not only overstepped its powers, it breached due process, and ignored the statute of limitations....

Let’s say that the post-17th Amendment ratificaton CFPB is a great idea. The major constitutional problem with the CFPB is that it remains that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to establish such an agency, or to make the Dodd-Frank Act that created it imo.

“A proposition was made to them to authorize Congress to open canals, and an amendatory one to empower them to incorporate. But the whole was rejected, and one of the reasons for rejection urged in debate was, that then they would have a power to erect a bank, which would render the great cities, where there were prejudices and jealousies on the subject, adverse to the reception of the Constitution [emphasis added].” —Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.

Corrections, insights welcome.

Note that CFPB and Dodd-Frank are examples, imo, of the small encroachment of state powers that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had warned patriots to be on their guard against.

”I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution (1788-06-06)
”To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” —Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson's Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791
”The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797.

Remember in November !

Patriots need to support Trump / Pence by also electing a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again for everybody, but will also put a stop to unconstitutonal federal taxes and likewise unconstitutional inteference in state affairs as evidenced by CFPB and the constitutionally indefensible (imo) Dodd-Frank law.

Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.

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