[inaudible conversations] >> richard cordray testified yesterday on capitol hill about his agencies semi annual report. the report released last month shows that he was actions resulted in financial institutions providing $114 million in redress to more than 700,000 consumers. this hearing is to ours. [inaudible conversations] >> the committee will come to order. today is they will hear from [ina richard cordray and director of the bureau of consumer financialommitteeill protections. the bureau has grown to over 1450 employees and has been active since director cordray last testimony before this committee. among other things it has raised expand enforcement actions to cover telecom companies and broaden its authority over the auto finance testimon industry. thin these actionsgs like otherspanies undertaken by the bureau since its formation have not been without contmoroversy.acti many would say some of them go beyond what congress envisioned in dodd-frank.say somethem for instance, the bureau'ssioned. regulation of otto ending now involves over 30 non-bank -bank lenders lenders not previ

today the committee will hear from richard cordray, the director of the bureau of consumer financial protection. the bureau has grown to over 1,450 employees, and has been very active since director cordray's last testimony before this committee. among other things, it has recently increased actions to include the auto finance industry. these actions like others undertaken by the bureau since its formation have not been without controversy. many would say some of them go beyond what congress envisioned in dodd/frank. for instance, the bureau's regulation of auto lending now involves over 30 nonbank lenders, not previously subject to its supervision. this move has been called into question given the specific exemption for auto dealers in dodd/frank. in addition to concerns with recent regulatory actions, issues remain with the bureau's lack of accountability. this has been demonstrated by concerns with the bureau's budgeting process, including the rising costs of renovation for the cfpb's new headquarters. according to the federal reserve inspector general, the estimated cost of actual

richard cordray. like a lot of members in this and i am really concerned about the vast amounts of data that is collected on all citizens. and this includes being related to financial transactions. i have not been able to allow any citizen to see what personal data at the cfpb has collected on them once a year. would you support that concept. >> in general, our approach to this issue is that we are not having instant data where we can at all avoid it because it only causes problems for us as an agency in our work. and the data we are collecting and you all ask us from time to time whether laws have gone too far and that is different from the morning data on what the senator does and we have some personally identifiable data in two respects where they give us the status of a can work on the complaint the same way that constituents go to your office as well. >> we have no reason to do that. >> you don't need to collect any of that remapped. >> no, for example the credit our data, we do not have names an

today the committee will here from richard cordray. 1,460 and has been very active since the last testimony before his committee. among other things it has recently expanded enforcement actions to cover telecom companies and broad authority over the automotive finance industry. these actions have not been without controversy. many would say some of them go beyond what congress envisioned. for instance, the bureaus regulation now involves over 30 non-bank lenders not previously subject. this move has been called into question given the specific exemption for auto dealers. in addition to concerns of recent regulatory actions issues remain the bureaus lack of accountability. this has been demonstrated by concerns with the bureaus budget process including the rising cost of renovation or the cfp be knew headquarters according to the federal reserve inspector general the estimated cost of actual renovation increased from $40 million in february of 2012 to 145 million in december 13. this is over three and a half times the initial estimate's. theestimate's. the inspector general also estimated th

i spoke about the data collection before the confirmation of richard cordray to be the director of the cfpb on july 16, 2013. i was the only senator to speak before this vote, and i repeated something i said during the gast debate of the dodd-frank act. on may 20, 2010, i said, "this bill was supposed to be about regulating wall street. instead, it's creating a google earth of your every financial transaction. that's right. the government will be able to see every detail of your finances. they can look at your transactions from the 50,000-foot perspective or they can look right down to the fining knee details of the time and place where you pulled cash out of an a.t.m. quks "i talked about some of the data that we had at that time. i'm unfortunately going to expand on those comments today because the cfpb continues to collect mass sufficient amounts of data without consent of the consumers. the government accountability office g.a.o., is a nonpartisan, independent agency that investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. they released an extensive report on september