EDITORIAL: Donald Trump seeks to reorganize the federal Consumer Protection Bureau

The Trump administration’s recently released budget blueprint had the usual suspects wailing and gnashing their teeth over cuts to “necessities” such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Public Broadcasting System.

Now the president risks even more brickbats from the left — if that’s even possible — for his effort to have the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declared unconstitutional.

Democrats created the bureau in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. It is supposed to serve as a watchdog over banks and other companies that offer financial services products. Instead, it’s a poster child for conflict and unaccountability, a prime example of Congress empowering the bureaucracy to essentially create and enforce laws with little or no oversight.

The agency is run by a single person whom the president may fire only for cause. Its budget is exempt from the regular appropriations debate. Its director has the power to supersede the judiciary and impose penalties on companies beyond those determined in court. Such unprecedented independence not only threatens due process protections, but it puts an inordinate amount of power in a single unelected bureaucrat.

Last year, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit declared the agency’s setup to be unconstitutional. The case will be reheard in May by the entire court. The Trump administration last week took the unusual step of asking the judiciary to “order the restructuring of the agency,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

This is good news. The bureau may have formed with the best of intentions. But good intentions don’t trump the Constitution’s system of checks and balances that are intended to disperse power throughout the federal system rather than consolidate it in the hands of a few.

“There is greater risk that an independent agency headed by a single person will engage in extreme departures from the president’s executive policy,” the Justice Department noted in its brief.

Expect government agencies such as Public Broadcasting to survive the budget process amid hysterical ululating about “killing Big Bird” and the like. They always do. But let’s hope Mr. Trump stands firm when it comes to reforming the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.