Congress is playing with matches around consumer protections, setting the scene for borrowers to get burned – and for broader repeals of regulations entrenched businesses want to reduce to ashes.

Last week, the Senate narrowly voted to yank a bulletin the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued back in 2013 advising auto dealerships of their liabilities under consumer protection law should they discriminate against borrowers by race.

Bias is a real risk when it comes to auto loans made by car dealers, which often hike the interest charged and take a cut, with the borrower none the wiser. Tests show white car-buyers getting better deals than others even when they had worse credit scores. (Tip: Next time you’re shopping for wheels, shop for a loan, too.)

Lawmakers’ instrument of destruction: the Congressional Review Act, which allows the House and Senate to repeal any agency’s rule with a simple majority vote as long as that vote takes place within 60 days of a rule being final. The even bigger prize is a future ban on restoring those rules.

So how’d Congress manage to use the maneuver to kibosh a five-year-old piece of federal guidance on auto loans? They asked a congressional watchdog office to declare that old advice letter a rule, restarting the 60-day clock.

If that twisted precedent holds, Congress could thwart legal action on any subject where federal agencies ever cared to clarify how they intend to enforce laws on the books. No, no, no.

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