As we previously reported, Texas’s conservative Attorney General takes the position that the CFPB is properly and currently funded. In a new filing captioned Plaintiff’s Response to Defendants’ Objections to Magistrate Judge’s Memorandum and Recommendation, Texas’s AG’s office states (footnotes and citation omitted):
* * * Defendants attack the CFPB’s funding statute based on a flawed understanding of what “combined earnings” means. Defendants quote a press release discussing minutiae of the Federal Reserve’s expenses exceeding its revenues. Defendants essentially hypothesize that because the Federal Reserve’s expenses exceeded its revenues, the Federal Reserve had no “combined earnings” to fund the CFPB. However, even the dissent in CFSA does not support Defendants’ theory, since it noted that “[t]he Federal Reserve’s earnings represent specific charges for specific services to specific individuals or companies.” 601 U.S. at 469 (Alito, J., dissenting) (cleaned up) (emphasis added). Thus, the term “earnings” equates to revenue, and it is undisputed there were “earnings” (or revenue) from which the Federal Reserve funded the CFPB.
