Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] made an eleventh-hour plea to her colleagues in the Senate yesterday, urging them not to confirm Kathy Kraninger as the new director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection when her nomination is put to a vote as early as today.
Kraninger is currently an associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget, is seeking to take over from Mick Mulvaney, who has been the BCFP’s acting director for the past year. Mulvaney has dramatically altered the structure and regulatory prerogatives of the bureau during his year as acting director, a course that Kraninger is expected to follow should she be confirmed.
“Mick Mulvaney has reversed course at the agency during his year-long tenure as Interim Director,” Sen. Warren wrote in her letter. “If Ms. Kraninger is confirmed to a five-year term, she would continue Mr. Mulvaney’s efforts to undermine the agency’s consumer protection mission and return to the pre-crisis approach towards consumer protection that cost millions of working families their homes, jobs, and savings.”
In great detail, Sen. Warren lays out all of her arguments against the changes that have occurred at the BCFP under Mulvaney and how Kraninger has “wholeheartedly endorsed” those efforts.
“…Mr. Mulvaney has turned the agency from a tough and effective non-partisan consumer watchdog into a highly partisan regulator that regularly puts the interests of financial firms and former Mulvaney campaign donors over those of working families,” Sen. Warren writes. Sen. Warren cited the consent order against National Credit Adjusters, in which the company was not required to provide restitution to the victims of its actions, as one example of how Mulvaney has weakened consumer protections while running the BCFP.
Sen. Warren also pointes out that Kraninger has no experience in consumer protection or that she has ever worked as a regulator.
A number of financial services trade groups, including ACA International, have endorsed Kraninger’s nomination to run the BCFP.
