In advance of testifying before the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee next week, Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released his semiannual report to Congress yesterday, and he made some strong suggestions that would severely affect his own job security and responsibilities.
Mulvaney’s report covers the period between April 1, 2017 and Sept. 30, 2017, a time when the agency was still run by former director Richard Cordray. Cordray resigned from the CFPB last November and is now running for governor of Ohio. Mulvaney was appointed acting director and can remain in that position until the end of June.
Mulvaney made four primary recommendations in his report:
- Fund the Bureau through Congressional appropriations;
- Require legislative approval of major Bureau rules;
- Ensure that the Director answers to the President in the exercise of executive authority; and
- Create an independent Inspector General for the Bureau.
Calling the CFPB “far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities,” Mulvaney stopped short of calling on Congress to change the leadership structure of the CFPB from a single director to a must-person commission, but did make other suggestions that would rein in the CFPB, after “Congress established an agency primed to ignore due process and abandon the rule of law in favor of bureaucratic fiat and administrative absolutism.”
Mulvaney listed the proposed debt collection rule third in a list of four planned, upcoming rules, following Payday, Vehicle title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans, and The Expedited Funds Availability Act.
In previewing what will likely be a contentious, partisan pair of hearings next week, Mulvaney admitted that he expects some members of Congress to react negatively to his suggestions.
I have no doubt that many Members of Congress disagree with my actions as the Acting Director of the Bureau, just as many Members disagreed with the actions of my predecessor. Such continued frustration with the Bureau’s lack of accountability to any representative branch of government should be a warning sign that a lapse in democratic structure and republican principles has occurred. This cycle will repeat ad infinitum unless Congress acts to make it accountable to the American people.
Mulvaney identified two “significant problems” that consumers are dealing with when it comes to financial services products: credit invisibles, or people who do not have a credit report, and not enough financial education.
