NOVEMBER 27, 2017, By Bre Payton

'I'm just learning about the powers that I have as acting director. They would frighten most of you.'

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney just savaged the federal agency President Donald Trump recently put him in charge of during his first press conference as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mulvaney, who has long criticized the CFPB, doubled down on his hatred of the agency which was enacted in 2011 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulations passed in the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn.


“Yeah, my opinion of the structure of CFPB has not changed,” Mulvaney said. “I still think it is an awful example of a bureaucracy that has gone wrong. It is almost entirely unaccountable to the people who are supposed to oversee it or pay for it.”

“I still have the same fundamental principled misgivings about the way this bureau is structured,” Mulvaney said. “I think it is wrong to have a completely unaccountable federal bureaucracy. I think it’s completely wrong.”

“I’m just learning about the powers that I have as acting director,” he added. “They would frighten most of you. They would probably worry you to think about how little oversight Congress has over me now as I’m the director, how little oversight the committees have over how CFPB functions.”

Mulvaney is currently embroiled in a fight over who is to succeed former CFPB head Richard Cordray, who resigned last Friday. Cordray named his chief of staff, Leandra English, as the new acting director of the agency, but Trump tapped Mulvaney to serve in that role instead. On Sunday, English reportedly filed a lawsuit against Trump and Mulvaney in an attempt the thawrt the president’s pick and assert herself as acting director.

During Monday’s presser, Mulvaney said the succession challenge is unsurprising given the nature of the agency and how little oversight it has.

“If you really studied the constitutional nature of our government, you’ve studied the way that the bureaucracy is supposed to work, it would both frighten and disturb you that this agency is as independent as it is,” he said.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/27/mic...ce-as-director/

Mulvaney says no plans to fire U.S. consumer bureau's English

By Michelle Price, 12/4/17

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mick Mulvaney, White House budget chief and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said on Monday he has no intention of firing Leandra English, who had attempted to block him from taking control of the agency.

Former CFPB head Richard Cordray had named English to lead the bureau following his resignation last month, but that appointment had been mired in turmoil after U.S. President Donald Trump had assigned Mulvaney to the same role.

A U.S. District Court judge last week sided with Trump, saying the law gave Mulvaney the right to lead the consumer finance watchdog, but English is challenging the decision.

During a news briefing at the CFPB on Monday, Mulvaney told reporters he would “absolutely not” consider firing English and that he would like her to continue to serve as deputy director but had not had any direct contact with her.

English could not immediately be reached for comment through her lawyer, Deepak Gupta.

Since arriving at the CFPB, Mulvaney has implemented a hiring freeze and suspended all new regulations for 30 days. On Monday, he said he was also reviewing more than 100 pending enforcement actions, including litigation as well as private settlement talks and investigations.

He declined to comment on specific cases, but said there were two litigation actions he has asked to delay and separately cited the CFPB’s case against mortgage company PHH Corp (PHH.N) as one that “has issues” without elaborating.

The budget chief said data security was also a top priority and that he had instructed the bureau to stop collecting personally identifiable information until data security problems highlighted by the bureau’s independent audit office had been addressed.

Mulvaney this week brought in Republican congressional lawyer Brian Johnson as a senior adviser and plans to quickly bring on board more political hires to help him review the bureau’s existing and pending regulations, the budget chief said.

“Then I‘m going to get down to the weeds of something I enjoy which is the budget, and how the agency ... is funded, how it’s structured, personnel, those types of things,” he added.

Trump “wants to move expeditiously” on naming a permanent replacement but the Senate confirmation process is likely to take some time and Mulvaney expects to be in the interim role for up to seven months, he said in an interview Reuters.

English is expected to formally file a preliminary injunction against Mulvaney and Trump this week, according to court filings.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t...h-idUSKBN1DY2KP