Randy Neugebauer (left) is inquiring about the new agency Elizabeth Warren heads. | AP Photos Warren faces first inquiry

The chairman of a financial services oversight panel sent a letter to Elizabeth Warren, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying he is skeptical of the new bureau’s very existence and demanded details about how it will operate.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), who chairs an oversight panel of the Financial Services Committee, said in the letter sent Tuesday that he thinks Warren is “tasked with executing a fatally flawed plan.”


He then asked Warren to answer three pages worth of questions about the new bureau. Some of the queries are operational, including how Warren will staff and organize the agency. Others are more broad, inviting her to explain how Congress should best perform its oversight role, given the body is not funded through the traditional appropriations process.

Neugenbauer also wants details on meetings Warren has held with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, and other financial regulatory agencies.

“What policies are in place to avoid potential duplicative, conflicting or overlapping rulemaking that are currently underway, but will ultimately be under the regulatory authority of the CFPB?” he asked.

He concludes asking Warren to explain how she plans to “avoid the kind of over-regulation that might stifle innovation.”

President Barack Obama rankled Republicans in September when he appointed Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, as an assistant to the White House and an adviser to the Treasury Department, circumventing a Senate nomination process that could have prevented Warren from setting up the consumer bureau.

Republicans said that her appointment, like the agency itself, represents an overreach of government.

Neugebauer’s letter is the first specific query into the body in the new Congress.

Neugebauer has said investigating the Dodd-Frank Act is a top priority for the subcommittee.

Warren has made her calendar publicly available after Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) asked for more transparency on her role. She’s met with several House Republicans, including Neugebauer, Financial Services chair Rep. Spencer Bachus, chair of the capital markets subcommittee Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N. J.) and Financial Services Vice Chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas).

Neugebauer asked Warren to respond to his list of requests by the end of the month.

A CFPB spokesman Dan Geldon declined comment.