So why are Republican senators all of a sudden wanting tougher bank regulation?

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby and other congressional Republicans seemingly have a newfound desire to regulate the banks. It's a remarkable thing, really, to see a spectacle like Tuesday's hearing where Wells Fargo's CEO was raked over the coals by Democrats and Republicans alike.  So why did Shelby have this hearing? Oh, that's right: to attack the CFPB, the agency that got the $100 million fine from Wells Fargo.

But CFPB is still facing heat from Republicans ― ironically, this time, for not regulating Wells Fargo hard enough.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and CFPB Director Richard Cordray, among others, faced the Senate banking committee Tuesday morning. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the committee chairman, pressed the CFPB on why it didn’t go after Wells Fargo more quickly, noting that the Los Angeles Times first reported on the problems in December 2013 and the Los Angeles city attorney sued the bank in 2015.

“This timeline begs the question: Where were the federal regulators during those years?” Shelby asked.

“Why did it take an LA Times reporter to uncover what should have been uncovered by Wells Fargo’s regulators? If there were ever a textbook case where consumers needed protection, this was it,” the senator added. “How many millions of unauthorized accounts does it take before the CFPB notices?”

The answer, of course, is that the CFPB knew about the abuses before the LA Times reported them, and they had started investigating months before the newspaper story in 2013, after being contacted by a whistleblower. It conducted an investigation, eventually merging with the Los Angeles city attorney’s investigation.

Make no mistake—Shelby isn't worried that the CFPB wasn't effective enough against Wells Fargo. He doesn't give a fig for all of the Wells Fargo customers who were defrauded by the bank. He's just looking for any excuse at all to continue his years-long crusade to destroy the agency.