COEUR d'ALENE - U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo is shocked by a "big data" roundup of consumer information by the little known federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Crapo, an Idaho Republican and the ranking member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said the bureau is collecting some data on Americans' credit card, student-loan and banking transactions and mortgages.

He said he was told by the bureau's director, Richard Cordray, that the data collection is necessary to protect consumers from businesses and other entities that collect information about consumers.

"I just don't think it's true that a regulator has to know a lot about Americans" to be effective, Crapo said. "There's no reason that (the bureau) needs to know what book you bought at Amazon last week."

In a May letter to Crapo, Cordray wrote, "the names of individual consumers and their contact information, Social Security numbers, and credit card account numbers are not included in the data."

Last month, Crapo asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the "big data collection effort being undertaken" by the bureau.

In that request to the GAO, Crapo noted he doesn't know exactly what information is being collected, on how many accounts, and how it is being used.

"I just think that the big data collection of big government is huge," Crapo said.

The bureau was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.

Crapo met Tuesday with The Press editorial board, laying out his concerns about the bureau, and discussing other topics, including his December DUI.

* The Mormon senator said his constituents have been forgiving and supportive.

"The people of Idaho have been just wonderful," he said. "It's been a hard thing personally to deal with myself just because of my own self-criticism."

He said he appreciated that Democrats didn't make an issue of it.

"There hasn't been any partisan reaction to it," he said. In the Senate specifically, colleagues on "both sides of the aisle, (have been) very supportive."

* While Crapo reads newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times - he prefers the Journal - those weren't the first names that came to his mind when asked where he gets reliable information and news.

"If you look at the major networks, I'd say Fox News does get the closest," Crapo said. "I wouldn't exactly say that I think that they're always unbiased."

On the Internet, he said, it's important to use a variety of sources. He has turned to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, another think tank, in the past for information.

Also, he said, "I haven't followed Drudge (Report) much recently, but in the past I thought Drudge was pretty good."

* Crapo said he opposes any increase in the minimum wage at the state or federal level. A group currently is gathering signatures to get an initiative on the November 2014 ballot asking voters whether to raise Idaho's minimum wage.

"It's government price fixing of wages," he said.

He said increases in the minimum wage reduces employment overall.

* He singled out two reasons why Congress doesn't pass legislation that would address any of the country's bigger problems, something the public has clamored for in recent years.

Issues such as debt reduction, tax reform, and immigration reform have remained on Congress' plate year after year.

Crapo said, for one, every special interest group in America that's invested in the current system is against comprehensive legislation.

"Americans tend to have the ability to clamor for something and then support the attack at the same time," he said.

The second barrier to major change is a politically divided Congress.

"Those two competing ideologies are not ready yet to make concessions," he said.