HFSC will hold hearing after new CFPB director confirmation

WASHINGTON — A House Financial Services Committee spokesperson suggested the committee will not hold its semiannual hearing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director until nominee Jonathan McKernan is confirmed, spurning a call from ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., to do so with the bureau’s current acting director, Russell Vought. 

“We received the letter and will work with the Ranking Member to schedule a CFPB semi-annual hearing following the confirmation of a Director,” a Hill spokesperson told American Banker via email. 

The statement comes after Waters sent a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, R-Ark., Wednesday asking for the body to hold its statutorily required semiannual hearing with the CFPB director sooner in order to hear testimony of acting CFPB director and Senate-confirmed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. 

Waters said in her Wednesday letter to Hill that the committee — along with the Senate Banking Committee — is required by statute to hold hearings with the CFPB director twice a year. Former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra last testified in front of the House Financial Services Committee on June 13. 

“The Bureau shall, concurrent with each semi-annual hearing … prepare and submit to the President and to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate and the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives, a report, beginning with the session following the designated transfer date,” the section of Dodd-Frank reads. 

Chopra did testify in front of the Senate Banking Committee after the bureau issued its semiannual report in December of 2024, but the House panel, under the leadership of former Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., never scheduled its own hearing with Chopra.

“We are obliged to hold this hearing under the law, and I look forward to working with you to fulfill our responsibilities under the Constitution to serve as a check and a balance to the Executive Branch,” Waters said in her letter to Hill. 

There is precedent for an acting CFPB director to testify in Congress as part of that statutory requirement. In 2018, acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney testified in the House Financial Services Committee.

The White House sent the nomination of Jonathan Mckernan — until recently a Republican board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — to become the new director of the CFPB to the Senate Tuesday evening. 

Waters, along with other Democrats — notably Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — has sought to put pressure on both congressional Republicans and the administration amid the effective shuttering of the CFPB under Vought. 

Warren and other Democrats have also sought to underline conflicts of interest between Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which has also descended on the bureau, pausing work and reportedly looking through its data, and Musk’s business interests. 

President Donald Trump has confirmed that his goal is to eliminate the agency, although such a move could only legally be abolished by congressional action. 

“Not only is our Committee obliged to hold this hearing under the law, recent efforts by Acting Director Vought and the Trump Administration to unlawfully shut down the CFPB and allow Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to infiltrate the CFPB to obtain sensitive data that would personally benefit Mr. Musk makes the need to hold this hearing all the more urgent,” Waters said in the letter.