House Republicans want to eliminate many of the agency's powers, restrict its ability to issue final rules and make the CFPB subject to the annual appropriations process.

But, regulatory agencies have also targeted the agency.

NCUA board members have publicly asked the agency to change its policies on at least three occasions.

More recently, the OCC has done it. And of course, the Treasury Department has proposed neutering the agency altogether.

And those are the public disagreements, not the ones waged in private emails.

First, there's the NCUA.

This month, Board Chairman J. Mark McWatters asked the agency to cede consumer enforcement and examination authority over the largest credit unions to the NCUA.

That letter follows one in which McWatters asked the CFPB to exempt credit unions from some rules and issue clear guidance on its use of enforcement actions based on its Unfair, Deceptive or Abusive Acts of Practices powers.

It would be easy to write off McWatters' letters as ideological differences between CFPB Director Richard Cordray, a Democrat, and McWatters, a Republican.

And some of that may be accurate. After all, McWatters used to work for House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), a rabid critic of the CFPB, who told Cordray to his face that he should be fired.

But political differences can't explain all of it.

When he was chairman of the NCUA, Democrat Rick Metsger wrote to Cordray asking him to abandon efforts to regulate payday lending at credit unions and let the NCUA do it instead.

"As the prudential regulator for federal credit unions, (the) NCUA already ensures that members receive the type of protections the bureau is seeking to address," he wrote.

So, politics can't explain all of it – at least at the NCUA.

The most recent bureaucratic criticism of Cordray comes from the acting comptroller of the currency, Keith Noreika, who questioned the wisdom of the agency's final rules restricting the use of arbitration agreements in financial services contracts.

Noreika, an appointee of President Trump, is an attorney who has represented large financial institutions, so his criticism no doubt is ideological and political.

Cordray hasn't taken that criticism lying down. He charged that the OCC never registered its objections to the arbitration rules.

Of course, throughout most of the rulemaking process, the OCC was controlled by Democrats.

The bureaucratic heat on Cordray is likely to intensify when – and if – he issues final rules governing payday loans.

Congressional Republicans already have made their opposition known and could mount a Congressional Review Act effort to nullify those rules.

But there's no timetable for the release of those rules – it could come tomorrow or never.

And regardless, Cordray may not be in the CFPB world for long. He just entered his final year in office and President Trump no doubt would love to fire him – an issue that is tied up in federal court.

And Cordray is rumored to be considering a run for the Democratic nomination for Ohio's governor. He doesn't have to make that decision for several months, but Democrats in the Buckeye State probably would like a decision sooner rather than later.

The Right to Bare Arms

Reporters on Capitol Hill are free to roam most of the Capitol campus in search of news. During votes on the House floor, many journalists hang out in the "Speakers' Lobby," a hallway just off the House floor, where the walls are covered by portraits of former House speakers.

There, the journalists can give doorkeepers cards requesting that a member of the House come off the floor for an interview. The doorkeepers look for the House member on the floor, hands the member the card and if the reporter is lucky, the member comes out for the interview.

It's one of the reasons why covering the Hill is so much fun – there's relatively easy access to members.

But there are some rules. For instance, reporters are not supposed to report on conversations they overhear between members or members and staff.

And there's a dress code, which hasn't been updated in decades.

The rules require men to wear coats and ties. Women cannot wear sleeveless dresses or open-toed shoes.

Recently, some reporters who didn't follow the code were barred from entry into the lobby and they took to Twitter to protest.

Now, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Ohio) has agreed to ask the House Sergeant at Arms to determine if the code needs updating.

Certain standards are likely to be relaxed since they are out of date. But reporters – particularly male reporters – are notoriously and habitually poorly dressed.

And so, some bad practices are likely to continue. For instance, any update to the dress code might not cover a former colleague of mine who wore a rope for a belt one day.

David Baumann is Correspondent-at-Large for Credit Union Times. He can be contacted at [email protected].