Anyone who follows the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection on a regular basis has been waiting for Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] to weigh in on President Trump’s selection of Kathy Kraninger to be the agency’s next permanent direction and the Senator did not disappoint when she finally broke her silence yesterday.
.@realDonaldTrump’s nominee to run the @CFPB, Kathy Kraninger, has no track record of helping consumers. That's bad news for seniors, servicemembers, students – and anyone else who doesn't want to get cheated. And it gets even worse.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 19, 2018
Sen. Warren didn’t stop there, though.
Kathy Kraninger helps oversee the agencies that are ripping kids from their parents. Now @realDonaldTrump wants her to run the @CFPB. I will put a hold on her nomination – & fight it at every step – until she turns over all documents about her role in this.#FamiliesBelongTogether pic.twitter.com/wrW7oXP3Eo
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 19, 2018
In vowing to block Kraninger’s nomination and confirmation, Sen. Warren — one of the primary architects who created the regulator in the wake of the Great Recession — has drawn a line in the sand that many had long expected. Kraninger’s nomination has been blasted by consumer advocates and other critics, and perhaps that is why Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the BCFP, stood up yesterday to defend Kraninger’s credentials.
“I have never worked with a more qualified individual than Kathy,” Mulvaney said in a statement. “Her commitment to the law, to protecting consumers and to defending what works in our vibrant financial services sector, all while respecting hard-working taxpayers who pay their bills and play by the rules ensures that the Bureau will be in good hands throughout her term. Vigorous independence, sharp-as-a-tack intelligence, and simple, old-fashioned, Midwestern humility makes her the ultimate public servant. From navigating and interpreting how the federal government supports and regulates financial services for key stakeholders to helping stand up a brand-new federal agency when she was at the Department of Homeland Security in its earliest days, she has the kind of experience Washington so desperately needs. I know that my efforts to rein in the bureaucracy at the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to make it more accountable, effective, and efficient will be continued under her able stewardship.”
Sen. Warren and others in Congress are using a controversial immigration policy as the tip of the spear to try and keep Kraninger from being confirmed. As associate director of the White House Office of Management & Budget, Kraninger has oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. Those two cabinet agencies have been engaged in a zero-tolerance policy of separating children from the parents of individuals attempting to enter the U.S. illegally.
“The American people deserve to know what role you have played in developing and implementing this appalling process,” Sen. Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-Ohio] wrote Kraninger in a letter yesterday, asking questions about her involvement in the policy.
