WASHINGTON — Rep. Jeb Hensarling figures not one in a thousand Americans has heard of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And so the Dallas Republican wants to leave a first impression for the unacquainted.

"It is the single-most unaccountable and powerful agency in the history of our republic, running afoul of every tenet of separation of powers and checks and balances," he said.

That saber-rattling tone marks the latest tactic from the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee as he and others in the GOP consider sundry ways to claw back components of a major law that tightened financial-sector regulations after the 2008 crisis.

The consumer bureau, so far, has emerged as ground zero.

Hensarling says he wants to protect consumers not just from Wall Street, but also from "Washington elites." He's worked up efforts to change the funding mechanism for the agency that was founded in 2011, oust its largely independent director or dispense with the bureau altogether.

And he has little patience for Democrats who see those moves as nothing short of a wet kiss to big banks.

"What the Democrats were trying to do, for all intents and purposes, was set up a tyranny," he said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. "The left essentially wants a benevolent dictator. ... It is frankly an affront to basic American tenets of democracy."

Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling shook hands with President Donald Trump after the president signed an executive order this month calling for a rewriting of major provisions of the Dodd-Frank law. (Al Drago/The New York Times)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a crucial piece of the Dodd-Frank bill signed into law by former President Barack Obama.

Largely the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the bureau was created as a government-run consumer advocacy group that would serve as a Wall Street watchdog. Its independence was part of the design, allowing it to supersede the politics of the day.

And Democrats like California Rep. Maxine Waters tout the bureau for returning "nearly $12 billion to more than 29 million consumers who have been harmed by financial institutions."

"Simply put, the CFPB stands up for people who have been ripped off by Wall Street and predatory lenders, and puts money back in their pockets," Waters, the ranking Democrat on House Financial Services, said in a prepared statement this month.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "stands up for people who have been ripped off." (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

But the agency's independence is the root cause of the GOP's frustration.

Hensarling bemoaned that the bureau gets to be a "cop on a beat, a judge and its own Congress." Those concerns gathered steam last year when a federal appeals court ruled that the bureau's structure was unconstitutional.

The Dallas Republican said the end result is harmful to consumers.

He said the bureau has led to higher bank fees, fewer banking options and more difficulty in obtaining loans. And he said the agency has failed in its enforcement duties, falling "asleep at the wheel" over Wells Fargo's sales scandal until others uncovered the problem.

Hensarling has responded by floating an even tougher version of a bill he introduced last year to weaken Dodd-Frank.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray has been the target of Republicans looking to overhaul Dodd-Frank. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The move comes as President Donald Trump has ordered a review of the financial rules — and as other Republicans take aim at the bureau. Hensarling, in a memo to lawmakers and in other venues, has pushed to dramatically scale back the bureau's functions.

He said he would like to narrow the focus to a "civil enforcement agency that enforces the 18 major consumer protection laws that we have on the books."

"The CFPB has eroded freedom, trampled due process and killed jobs," Hensarling wrote in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. "It must go."

Democrats have reacted with outrage.

Waters said the GOP's proposals "no longer pretend to be attempts to improve the bureau." Warren told The New York Times she was "worried for the millions of working families who have gotten some help over the last five years from a strong and independent consumer agency."

The bureau was largely the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press)

And Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said Hensarling's effort would turn the bureau from "an effective watchdog into a toy poodle."

"Nice enough if that's your taste, but not very useful," said Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Republicans will probably need to win over some Senate Democrats to avoid a filibuster on a Dodd-Frank revamp. But Hensarling has suggested the GOP could avoid that difficulty by using a budgeting tool known as reconciliation — already teed up for use in health care and tax overhauls.

And in any case, Hensarling isn't backing down.

"I stand ready to negotiate," he said. "I just don't plan to negotiate with myself."