The House and Senate are in session this week.

Throughout the last century, Congress has been delegating a lot of its legislative authority to the executive branch through the creation of new administrative agencies to make new regulations.

The disconnect between Washington and middle America has gained a lot of prominence recently. President Donald Trump has gained a lot of attention with his campaign pledge last year to “Drain the Swamp” of corruption, so there has been a lot of desire to increase accountability in Washington. Fortunately, it looks like a proposal to do just that is on the horizon.

On behalf of our activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and representative and ask them to support legislation to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and to co-sponsor the legislation if they have not already done so. Introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the Senate and by Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) in the House, S. 370 and H.R. 1031 would begin the process of rolling back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor the Agency Accountability Act, H.R. 850, introduced by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.). The bill would require federal agencies to deposit revenues collected through fines, fees, or proceeds from legal settlements into the general fund of the Treasury.

Yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit officially ruled that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is unconstitutional, a criticism that has been leveled at the agency since its creation in 2010. The court found that so much unaccountable power was concentrated in the person of the director of the CFPB that it could not pass constitutional muster. Under the court’s ruling, the director now will be removable at will by the president, just like the head of any other agency. This represents an important blow for the system of separation of powers enshrined in the US Constitution.

On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized new rules on certain types of increasingly popular new payment methods. While primarily aimed at prepaid debit cards, the regulations are so broad that they also include new mobile payment options such as Google Wallet, PayPal, Venmo, and potentially many more. The rules effectively seek to regulate all these financial products in much the same manner that credit cards are currently regulated, with all the paperwork and compliance that entails. The new regulations threaten to crush these flexible payment methods simply because the bureaucrats cannot contemplate that a business activity might be better off beyond the reach of the regulators.