‘It’s None of the CFPB’s Business!’: Sen. Kennedy Decries New ‘Woke’ Lending Rule for Small Business

Mr. President, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we call it the CFPB, has struck again. It has made another bad decision. This by an agency that has become famous for bad decisions. Here's what's going on, Mr. President. You remember the Dodd-Frank Act, which this Congress passed after the financial meltdown in 2007, 8, and 9. There was a section in the Dodd-Frank Act called Section 1071, fairly innocuous. Congress directed certain information to be collected about small business loans. We were curious about small business lending in America. We directed, in this Section 1071, we directed certain covered financial institutions, I'll call them small banks because most business loans to small business people come from small banks. We directed small banks to start collecting information about their loans to small business people because we wanted to know. See if we could do something to make their services more efficient. And we, the Congress, asked that 13 pieces of information be collected. The sort of stuff, Mr. President, that you would imagine, very routine stuff, like what was the date of the loan, small business loan, how much was the loan, that sort of thing. The CFPB has taken our work and totally perverted it. The CFPB has promulgated a rule that totally perverts our intention in Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. First, we intended only small businesses to be covered in providing this information. Now, if you look at the definition of a small business, which is, most people use the definition that has been put out by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. That's the NFIB says the small business is the small business that has 10 or fewer people and sales of about a half a million dollars a year, not according to the CFPB. They want to cast the net as far and wide as they can. Their definition of a small business will almost double that, more than double that. They say a small business is a company with $5 million in revenue or less from the previous fiscal year, not $500,000, $5 million. So this is going to throw the net of government much, much wider than Congress ever intended. But the second and most egregious thing the CFPB has done, they took our 13 pieces of information that we asked for by Congress, and they have expanded it to 81. All of a sudden they want a book. Now, here are some examples of what the CFPB is going to require small banks to ask of small businesswomen and small businessmen when they come to the bank and ask for a loan. The bank has to ask the small businessperson how long it's been in business. That's fair. The bank has to ask the small businesswoman or small businessman about its annual revenue. That's fair. The bank, but then it gets a little intrusive. It gets a lot intrusive. The bank has to ask the small businesswoman or small businessman what their race is. The bank has to ask the small businessperson about their ethnic background. The small bank has to ask the small businessperson if he's a male. The bank has to ask the small businessperson if she's a female. Should be obvious to many, but those questions have to be asked. The bank has to ask the small businessperson if that person is a lesbian. The bank has to ask the small businessperson if that person is gay. The bank has to ask that small businessperson if that small businessperson is bisexual. The small bank has to ask its customer, that small businessperson, if that small businessperson is transgender. The bank, according to the CFPB, has to ask that small businessperson who is applying for a loan, just came in for a loan for the business, if that person is, quote, queer. The small bank has to ask that small businessperson if the small businessperson is intersex. And not only does the bank have to ask those questions, those private questions of the person from the small business applying for the loan. The person applying for the loan on behalf of the small business has to bring in every one of its owners who own 25 percent or more. And the bank's got to start over with those people. Are you a male? Are you a female? What's your race? Tell me about your ethnic background. Are you a lesbian? Are you gay? Are you bisexual? Are you transgender? Are you, quote, queer? Are you, quote, intersex? Give me a break. And then all of this information that's collected, this private information, has got to be sent to the CFPB. And they're going to put it on their website. Are you gay? Are you lesbian? What race are you? They're going to put it on their website. Now the CFPB says, well, it's going to be institutional-level data, just top-line data fields. Bull. You will be able to take this data, particularly if you're a small bank in a rural area, and be able to, the snoops will be able to go on that public website and find out who identifies small business people in their community, how much money they're borrowing, how they answered the question about whether they were gay, how they answered the question about whether they were intersex. Incredibly private information. And why? Why does the CFPB need this information? Well, the truth is they don't, but I'll tell you why. The CFPB is setting these small business people, but also these small banks, up for lawsuits. That's exactly what they're doing. And what happens, what happens if a small business person goes into the bank and the small banker says, listen, I hate to have to ask you this, but CFPB says I have to ask you, are you gay? As if that's anybody's business. And the small business person says, that's none of your business. And I'm not going to answer that question. I'm here for a loan, not to talk about my private life. What I do in my privacy, in my bedroom with a consenting adult is my opinion, Mr. Banker. And the small banker says, you're right, I'm sorry, I had to ask, they make me. If the small business person won't answer the question, the small banker can get in trouble with the CFPB. What has the world come to? And the CFPB, it doesn't care about the cost. You know what this is going to cost to implement every year? $400 million. Why? And that doesn't even include the cost of actually setting up this program. That'll be hundreds of millions of dollars more. And it's not like the CFPB is exactly a wizard when it comes to data security. I mean, yeah, it's going to be on their public website, but in terms of the granular information, the CFPB says, oh, don't worry, we'll protect it. Right. We protected it a few months ago. The personally identifiable information of 256,000 consumers, which was being held by the CFPB, was breached. And you know what the CFPB did? They didn't tell anybody for two months. They acted like a rock, only dumber. We're not talking about wizards here. Wizards of financial data privacy and security. Mr. President, you know, I hear it all the time. You probably hear it back in your state, perhaps. But people tell me all the time, Kennedy, what's wrong with Washington, D.C.? Why is common sense illegal there? This rule. What has the world come to? So my Congressional Review Act request is to have the Senate tell the CFPB that it is none of their business, none of their business, what a private American does with another private adult American in the privacy of their bedroom. We are free to, so long as it doesn't break any laws to express our sexuality however we want to, and it's none of the CFPB's business. And with that, Mr. President, I ask my Senate colleagues to overturn this rule.