“Congress has already passed this common-sense resolution to safeguard the personal information of small business owners, and it’s wrong for a minority of senators to allow Pres. Biden to keep putting sensitive personal information at risk.”

WASHINGTON – The Senate today attempted to overcome President Joe Biden’s veto of Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-La.) Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval. The resolution would prohibit the Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from enforcing its Dodd Frank Section 1071 small business data collection rule. The attempted veto-override earned 54 votes, failing to reach the two-thirds majority needed to advance.

The Senate originally passed Kennedy’s resolution of disapproval in October, and the House of Representatives passed it in December.

“Common sense is illegal at the CFPB, yet some of my colleagues failed to protect the privacy of small business owners across America from the Biden administration’s woke, invasive rule. Congress has already passed this common-sense resolution to safeguard the personal information of small business owners, and it’s wrong for a minority of senators to allow Pres. Biden to keep putting sensitive personal information at risk,” said Kennedy.

Section 1071 requires covered financial institutions to collect certain personal information on small business loan applicants and report that to the CFPB. This information includes an applicant’s race, ethnicity and sex and whether the business is minority-owned, woman-owned or LGBT-owned. The CFPB may then make certain parts of that information public, including data that could be used to publicly identify the small business credit applicant.

Background:

In June 2023, Kennedy introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval of the CFPB rule to implement Dodd Frank Section 1071, which amends the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Kennedy introduced the Transparency in CFPB Cost-Benefit Analysis Act to ensure that the CFPB does not establish regulations that would foist unreasonable costs or harms onto taxpayers, financial entities or consumers.

Kennedy introduced the Small LENDER Act to protect Louisiana’s small businesses’ access to capital. The legislation would block the Biden administration’s CFPB from requiring community banks and small lenders to collect and report social data—such as race, gender and ethnicity—from borrowers.

The legislation is available here.