Taxpayer Funds Oversight and Accountability Act
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Rep. Connolly, Gerald E. [D-VA-11]
ID: C001078
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another bill from the esteemed members of Congress, because what could possibly go wrong with more bureaucratic meddling? Let's dissect this mess.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Taxpayer Funds Oversight and Accountability Act (HR 1558) claims to aim at improving governmentwide financial management by modifying existing laws. The real purpose is likely to create the illusion of accountability while maintaining the status quo of inefficiency and corruption.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:**
* Expands the role of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in overseeing agency finances, because clearly, they haven't been doing their job well enough. * Introduces new requirements for internal controls, financial reporting, and performance metrics. Because who doesn't love more paperwork and bureaucratic red tape? * Mandates agencies to submit plans to implement the 4-year financial management plan prepared by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Translation: more opportunities for OMB to exert control over agency finances.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:**
* Agencies with CFOs, who will now have even more hoops to jump through. * The OMB, which gains more power in overseeing agency finances. * Taxpayers, who will likely see no tangible benefits from this bill but might experience increased frustration with the government's inefficiencies.
**Potential Impact & Implications:**
* More bureaucratic overhead and costs associated with implementing new requirements. * Potential for agencies to focus on compliance rather than actual financial management improvements. * Increased power concentration in the OMB, which could lead to more centralized control over agency finances. * The illusion of accountability will be maintained, while the underlying issues of inefficiency and corruption remain unaddressed.
In conclusion, this bill is a classic case of "treating the symptoms rather than the disease." It's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Congress is trying to appear concerned about financial management without actually addressing the root causes of the problems. The real disease here is bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, but that would require actual reform, not just more legislation.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do than watch this farce unfold. Next patient, please!
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
â 837 â Financial Regulatory Agencies l Require the SEC and the CFTC to publish a detailed annual report on SRO supervision. AUTHORâS NOTE: The preparation of this chapter was a collective enterprise of individuals involved in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume, but Paul Atkins, C. Wallace DeWitt, Christopher Iacovella, Brian Knight, Chelsea Pizzola, and Andrew Vollmer deserve special mention. The author alone assumes responsibility for the content of this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual. CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU Robert Bowes The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was authorized in 2010 by the DoddâFrank Act.32 Since the Bureauâs inception, its status as an âinde- pendentâ agency with no congressional oversight has been questioned in multiple court cases, and the agency has been assailed by critics33 as a shakedown mecha- nism to provide unaccountable funding to leftist nonprofits politically aligned with those who spearheaded its creation. In 2015, for example, Investorâs Business Daily accused the CFPB of âdiverting potentially millions of dollars in settlement payments for alleged victims of lending bias to a slush fund for poverty groups tied to the Democratic Partyâ and plan- ning âto create a so-called Civil Penalty Fund from its own shakedown operations targeting financial institutionsâ that would use âramped-up (and trumped-up) anti-discrimination lawsuits and investigationsâ to âbankroll some 60 liberal non- profits, many of whom are radical Acorn-style pressure groups.â34 The CFPB has a fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget of $653.2 million35 and 1,635 full- time equivalent (FTE) employees.36 From FY 2012 through FY 2020, it imposed approximately $1.25 billion in civil money penalties;37 in FY 2022, it imposed approximately $172.5 million in civil money penalties.38 These penalties are imposed by the CFPB Civil Penalty Fund, described as âa victims relief fund, into which the CFPB deposits civil penalties it collects in judicial and administrative actions under Federal consumer financial laws.â39 The CFPB is headed by a single Director who is appointed by the President to a five-year term.40 Its organizational structure includes five divisions: Operations; Consumer Education and External Affairs; Legal; Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending; and Research, Monitoring and Regulations.41 Each of these divisions reports to the Office of the Director, except for the Operations Division, which reports to the Deputy Director. Passage of Title X of DoddâFrank was a bid to placate concern over a series of regulatory failures identified in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The law imported a new superstructure of federal regulation over consumer finance and â 838 â Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise mortgage lending and servicing industries traditionally regulated by state bank- ing regulators. Consumer protection responsibilities previously handled by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, National Credit Union Admin- istration, and Federal Trade Commission were transferred to and consolidated in the CFPB, which issues rules, orders, and guidance to implement federal consumer financial law. The CFPB collects fines from the private sector that are put into the Civil Pen- alty Fund.42 The fund serves two ostensible purposes: to compensate the victims whom the CFPB perceives to be harmed and to underwrite âconsumer educationâ and âfinancial literacyâ programs.43 How the Civil Penalty Fund is spent is at the discretion of the CFPB Director. The CFPB has been unclear as to how it decides what âconsumer educationâ or âfinancial literacy programsâ to fund.44 As noted, critics have charged that money from the Civil Penalty Fund has ended up in the pockets of leftist activist organizations. In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,45 the Supreme Court of the United States held that the CFPBâs leadership by a single individual remov- able only for inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance violated constitutional separation of powers requirements because â[t]he Constitution requires that such officials remain dependent on the President, who in turn is accountable to the people.â46 The CFPB Director is thus subject to removal by the President. The CFPB is not subject to congressional oversight, and its funding is not determined by elected lawmakers in Congress as part of the typical congressional appropriations process. It receives its funding from the Federal Reserve, which is itself funded outside the appropriations process through bank assessments. CFPB funding represents 12 percent of the total operating expenses of the Fed- eral Reserve and is disbursed by the unelected Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.47 This is not the case with respect to any other federal agency. On October 19, 2022, in Community Financial Services Association of America v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the CFPBâs âperpetual insulation from Congressâs appropriations power, including the express exemption from congressional review of its funding, renders the Bureau âno longer dependent and, as a result, no longer accountableâ to Congress and, ultimately, to the peopleâ48 and that â[b]y abandoning its âmost complete and effectualâ check on âthe overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the governmentââindeed, by enabling them in the Bureauâs caseâCongress ran afoul of the separation of powers embodied in the Appropriations Clause.â49 The Court further remarked that the CFPBâs âcapacious portfolio of authority acts âas a mini legislature, prosecutor, and court, responsible for creating substantive rules for a wide swath of industries, prosecuting violations, and levying knee-buckling penalties against private citizens.ââ50
Introduction
â 830 â Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Three basic categories of firm: private firms, an intermediate category of smaller firms,4 and public firms; l Reasonable, scaled disclosure requirements; and l Specified secondary markets for the securities of these firms.5 The SEC needs to be reformed to achieve its important core functions more effectively, to improve transparency and due process, and to reduce unnecessary regulatory impediments to capital formation.6 Under current law, the SEC Chair- man has the authority to make almost all of the necessary changes.7 Unfortunately, financial regulators, particularly the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), are poorly managed and organized. With regulatory authority delegated by the government, both the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and FINRA have proved to be ineffective, costly, opaque, and largely impervious to reform. To reduce costs and improve transparency, due process, congressional oversight, and responsiveness, PCAOB and FINRA should be abolished, and their regulatory functions should be merged into the SEC. Furthermore, Congress should establish an indepen- dent board or commission and charge it with producing a detailed report within 18 months that examines the degree to which the regulatory functions of the var- ious other so-called self-regulatory organizations (SROs), which are no longer self-regulatory in any meaningful sense, should be moved to the SEC.8 Discrimination based on immutable characteristics has no place in financial regulation. Offices at financial regulators that promote racist policies (usually in the name of âdiversity, equity, and inclusionâ) should be abolished, and regulations that require appointments on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation should be eliminated. Equal protection of the law, equal opportunity, and individ- ual merit should govern regulatory decisions.9 Congress has given the SEC broad âgeneral exemptive authority,â10 but the SEC has used this authority only rarely. It should use this authority significantly more often to reduce the regulatory burden on issuers, particularly smaller entrepreneurs. ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPITAL FORMATION Financial regulators should remove regulatory impediments to entrepreneur- ial capital formation.11 In the absence of the fundamental reform outlined above, the SEC should: l Simplify and streamline Regulation A (the small issues exemption)12 and Regulation CF (crowdfunding)13 and preempt blue sky registration and quali- fication requirements for all primary and secondary Regulation A offerings.14
Introduction
â 830 â Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Three basic categories of firm: private firms, an intermediate category of smaller firms,4 and public firms; l Reasonable, scaled disclosure requirements; and l Specified secondary markets for the securities of these firms.5 The SEC needs to be reformed to achieve its important core functions more effectively, to improve transparency and due process, and to reduce unnecessary regulatory impediments to capital formation.6 Under current law, the SEC Chair- man has the authority to make almost all of the necessary changes.7 Unfortunately, financial regulators, particularly the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), are poorly managed and organized. With regulatory authority delegated by the government, both the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and FINRA have proved to be ineffective, costly, opaque, and largely impervious to reform. To reduce costs and improve transparency, due process, congressional oversight, and responsiveness, PCAOB and FINRA should be abolished, and their regulatory functions should be merged into the SEC. Furthermore, Congress should establish an indepen- dent board or commission and charge it with producing a detailed report within 18 months that examines the degree to which the regulatory functions of the var- ious other so-called self-regulatory organizations (SROs), which are no longer self-regulatory in any meaningful sense, should be moved to the SEC.8 Discrimination based on immutable characteristics has no place in financial regulation. Offices at financial regulators that promote racist policies (usually in the name of âdiversity, equity, and inclusionâ) should be abolished, and regulations that require appointments on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation should be eliminated. Equal protection of the law, equal opportunity, and individ- ual merit should govern regulatory decisions.9 Congress has given the SEC broad âgeneral exemptive authority,â10 but the SEC has used this authority only rarely. It should use this authority significantly more often to reduce the regulatory burden on issuers, particularly smaller entrepreneurs. ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPITAL FORMATION Financial regulators should remove regulatory impediments to entrepreneur- ial capital formation.11 In the absence of the fundamental reform outlined above, the SEC should: l Simplify and streamline Regulation A (the small issues exemption)12 and Regulation CF (crowdfunding)13 and preempt blue sky registration and quali- fication requirements for all primary and secondary Regulation A offerings.14 â 831 â Financial Regulatory Agencies l Either democratize access to private offerings by broadening the definition of accredited investor for purposes of Regulation D or eliminate the accredited investor restriction altogether.15 l Allow traditional self-certification of accredited investor status for all Regulation D Rule 506 offerings. l Exempt small micro-offerings from registration requirements.16 l Exempt small and intermittent finders from brokerâdealer registration requirements and provide a simplified registration process for private placement brokers.17 l Exempt peer-to-peer lending from federal and state securities laws and reduce the regulatory burden on Regulation CF debt securities. l Make the Title I Emerging Growth Company (EGC) exemptions permanent for all EGCs. l Reduce the regulatory burden on small brokerâdealers and exempt privately held, non-custodial brokerâdealers from the requirements to use a PCAOB- registered firm for their audits. Congress should: l Amend the Internal Revenue Code to disregard crowdfunding and Regulation A shareholders for purposes of the 100-shareholder limit for Subchapter S corporations.18 BETTER CAPITAL MARKETS To improve capital markets, the SEC should: l Preempt blue sky registration, qualification, and continuing reporting requirements for securities traded on established securities markets (including a national securities exchange or an alternative trading system).19 l Terminate the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) program.20 l Abolish Rule 144 and other regulations that restrict securities resales and instead require a company that has sold securities to provide sufficient current informa- tion to the market to permit reasonable investment decisions and secondary sales.
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.