Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) expressed tentative satisfaction Tuesday with plans for reform at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) following a government probe that confirmed the agency’s diversity problems.
CFPB officials have agreed to implement each of the 17 structural changes recommended by the Federal Reserve’s inspector general (IG) to address the issue, which includes increased diversity training for employees.
{mosads}”While the findings confirm anecdotal suspicions, I am pleased to see that the CFPB has agreed with every recommendation made by the Inspector General and has already begun taking significant steps to address diversity and inclusion issues within its ranks,” said Waters — the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee — in a statement.
According to the CFPB IG report released on Monday, 100 percent of promotions to senior pay grades during fiscal year 2012 and fiscal year 2013 went to white employees.
The report found that diversity was not a performance goal for managers, stating: “Performance competencies for supervisors and senior managers do not adequately measure diversity and inclusion efforts.”
Unlike most other agencies, the CFPB does not have its own IG and receives its appropriations not through Congress but through the Federal Reserve. Reps. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.) have introduced legislation that would create a CFPB IG, but it’s unclear if it will gain traction.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) in a statement called the CFPB “a very troubled bureaucracy and these findings lends credence to what dozens of whistle blowers have told our committee.”
“Each day it becomes more apparent that the CFPB is an unaccountable Washington bureaucracy in need of real reforms,” Hensarling said.
Hensarling and other Republicans have raised concerns about CFPB’s track record with diversity in a series of hearings and have proposed structural changes to its makeup.
Democrats have opposed such changes, arguing that it would weaken the powers of the agency, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
Waters said she will be “releasing a detailed analysis of the diversity and inclusion practices of all the federal financial regulators.”
She then suggested that Hensarling was playing politics by targeting the CFPB.
“Unlike our Republican colleagues, who have refused to hold hearings on diversity issues facing any other regulator, Democrats support women and minorities at all of our federal agencies — not just the one created by Dodd-Frank,” Waters said.
A Republican source on Capitol Hill said it was a “positive” for Waters to acknowledge the IG confirmed issues of diversity at the CFPB, but noted that many Democrats had originally attempted to halt the committee’s investigation into the manner.