GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Status

Accepted

Abstract

How should the federal government be organized – and who (i.e., which departments, agencies, bureaus, and commissions) should do what? The issue is not new: President James Madison addressedgovernmental organization in his 1812 State of the Union Address, and in the last century, it is the rare President that does not propose to reorganize some part of the federal government. Indeed, on numerous occasions during the past century, virtually every part of the federal government has been repeatedly reorganized and reconfigured. In previous work, we examined the dynamics that influencethe assignment of regulatory duties to an agency, how those dynamics (and the allocation of responsibilities) can change over time, and how the specific combination of regulatory functions andpurposes affect agency decision-making. In this article, we focus on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”). Using the framework we developed in our previous work, we examine the costs andbenefits of the design choices made by the architects of the CFPB, and make some (appropriately hedged) predictions about the future prospects of this latest addition to the federal bureaucracy. We also briefly consider the implications of our analysis for the implementation of the Patient Protection andAffordable Care Act (“PPACA”).

GW Paper Series

GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 2014-2; GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-2

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