In advance of her confirmation hearing today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.], has released a report highlighting the “disastrous tenure” at the White House Office of Management & Budget for Kathy Kraninger, who has been nominated to be the next director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, an agency that Sen. Warren helped establish.
“This report examines Ms. Kraninger’s track record at OMB and finds that the agencies she supervises have been responsible for some of the Trump Administration’s most costly – and tragic – management failures,” the report states. “Based on these results, she has not earned a promotion to lead the CFPB.”
The report highlights a number of incidents in which Kraninger, who is an associate director at the OMB under Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the BCFP, may have played a role. Those incidents include an immigration policy which separated children from their parents when attempting to enter the United States illegally, the response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico last year, and for exacerbating an affordable housing crisis in the United States.
“Ms. Kraninger’s purported management experience and ability is the sole basis for her nomination, which is why her management failures in these areas undercut any case for her nomination to run a major federal agency,” the report states.
Tying Kraninger, who as an associate director at OMB had budget oversight over the departments and agencies which implemented or dealt with those incidents, might be a bit of a stretch. It’s not clear how much discretion that Kraninger has in dictating the budget for the Department of Housing & Urban Development, for example, which has proposed budget changes that could make it much more difficult for low-income families to be able to afford rent or housing. But it is clear how Sen. Warren, and other Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, will attempt to derail Kraninger’s confirmation.
