Rep. Katie Porter Destroys CFPB Director With Math

By Aliza Worthington — October 17, 2019

Well, it certainly tracks that Rep. Katie Porter was a student of Senator Elizabeth Warren's at Harvard. The clear and incisive questioning of those who'd dismiss the importance of knowing the ins and outs of finance and how it impacts the average consumer shone through, as always, while Rep. Porter was on her game.

Rep. Porter was questioning the Director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB,) Kathy Kraninger, when she asked the Director a simple question about how to calculate the amount of a loan payment or amount financed. Kraninger hemmed and hawed, and Porter whipped out her trusty "Teacher's Manual" to help her along with the simple math. The amount financed involves one simple subtraction problem, and the amount of the loan payment involves one simple division problem.

Apparently this added up to a LARGE problem for the GOP on the committee, who whined about Porter's "props," and it was especially a problem for Kraninger, who said she didn't have her staffers on hand to figure it all out. Porter responded,

REP. PORTER: Consumers in the marketplace do not have staff to understand these disclosures. They are out there by themselves trying to figure it out. You are in charge of making sure that these lenders, often entry-level, rank-and-file employees, fill these disclosures out correctly. So, as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, when you see these disclosures, you have to be able to know if they are correctly completed, or incorrectly completed. Otherwise, you can't do the enforcement work.

LISTEN. You would THINK these people would know better by now not to come to a hearing with Rep. Katie Porter without having done their homework to the fullest, and having had their parents check it over TWICE for errors. Otherwise, you end up looking like this fool.

Watch more video of Katie in action in the tweets below:

A professor never comes to class unprepared. At a hearing today, I asked @CFPBDirector to do some math⁠—and I made sure to bring my Teacher's Manual. pic.twitter.com/owimnVcNKX

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) October 16, 2019

I'd like to address 2 objections to my questions:
1. The Director shouldn't be asked to do math.
2. She has staff who help.

Instead of protecting consumers, @CFPB's "Your Money, Your Goals" program asks consumers to do their own math, and they don't have staff to do it for them. pic.twitter.com/1W5zVe5NGr

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) October 16, 2019

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