CFPB: The rogue federal agency that aims to reign but needs to be reined in

Lord Acton once said that "power tends to corrupt…and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Nowhere is this truer today than at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB is the quintessential example of what happens when accountability to Congress and the president is removed—when there are no checks and balances on the power of an unelected bureaucrat.

Created as a part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, the CFPB wields immense, unbridled power over consumers and businesses, dictating the circumstances in which people have access to basic banking, student loans, home financing, credit cards, and a host of other financial services.

All of this power resides in one person: CFPB Director Richard Cordray, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. Cordray answers to no one. Although Cordray has exercised his vast, hyper-paternalistic authority in a manner that has limited consumer choice and shuttered community banks, the president cannot fire him absent a finding of "inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office."

On top of all this, the director—not Congress—controls the CFPB's annual budget and is thus utterly unrestrained by Congress's power of the purse. And, even though the presidency that spawned Cordray and the majority in the Senate that confirmed him are now in the hands of different parties, Cordray remains in firm control of his part of the government.