Trump’s effort to have the agency self- starve itself IS ILLEGAL…..
ONLY Congress does funding….
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration must secure funding for a consumer watchdog agency or risk violating an existing court order barring its shuttering, rejecting a novel legal argument from the government.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) must continue to request funding and the Federal Reserve must provide it from its “combined earnings,” even when the central bank’s interest expenses exceed its earnings, so the agency can fulfill its statutory duties.
The Trump administration had pointed to a Justice Department memo from its Office of Legal Counsel that concluded there were no funds legally available for the CFPB to request from the Fed.
Jackson suggested the administration “manufactured” a lapse in funding for the CFPB to justify its “unilateral decision” to abandon its obligations under her earlier court order keeping the agency intact.
“Neither the statute, the injunction, nor the Fed’s willingness to pay has changed; the only new circumstance is the administration’s determination to eliminate an agency created by Congress with the stroke of pen, even while the matter is before the Court of Appeals,” the judge wrote in a 32-page decision….
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