Swamp money laundering operation.
Via Politico:
Newly empowered House Democrats are vowing an all-out fight to salvage the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the face of the Trump administration’s drive to curb the agency’s power.
Party lawmakers have seethed for the last year as Mick Mulvaney has cut back on enforcement and curtailed funding requests for the bureau, the brainchild of President Donald Trump’s nemesis, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, will soon depart as acting CFPB chief to be replaced by his little-known lieutenant at OMB, Kathy Kraninger, who has no experience in either consumer affairs or banking. That could give the Democrats a much stronger hand in defending the Obama-era bureau, by doing everything from securing its independent source of funding to conducting endless oversight hearings.
Fending off further GOP attempts to rein in the CFPB “would be a battle with this administration, and it would be a test of wills,” said Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency.
“I’m ready to fight that battle,” Clay said.
Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who will take over as chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, has made clear that shielding the agency will be a key priority. And even if Kraninger is confirmed as CFPB director by the time the gavel switches hands, there will be pressure from consumer advocates to investigate lingering questions from Mulvaney’s tenure on how the agency has handled everything from fair lending enforcement to student loans.
“You can’t protect consumers without looking at and investigating the CFPB under Mick Mulvaney,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of the consumer group Allied Progress.