Separate bank regulators from politics

Wells Fargo was just fined a total of $1 billion by the federal government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The fines are not related to the fake-account scandal for which the bank was fined over $100 million in 2016.

This time Wells Fargo was penalized for requiring autoloan borrowers to pay for insurance they didn’t need, and for charging mortgage borrowers fees to extend interest-rate locks even when the need for the extension was Wells Fargo’s fault.

It’s the biggest fine ever imposed by the CFPB, an agency created in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Act as a response to the financial crisis.

Republicans have long criticized the CFPB as an example of unnecessary and burdensome regulation, and the banking industry complains the bureau is too aggressive and overreaching in exercising its powers, resulting in damage to financial firms.

But opponents of the CFPB were not helped by some recent statements made by the agency’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney, also the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Speaking to the American Bankers Association conference, Mulvaney said that when he served in Congress, the only lobbyists he met with were ones who had made contributions to his campaigns.

Mulvaney suggested the bankers make donations to lawmakers and urge them to support legislation to weaken the powers of the CFPB.

No doubt Mulvaney could pass a lie detector test with those statements describing how Washington works.

But the CFPB is an independent agency that is supposed to be walled off from politics.

Now Mulvaney is under scrutiny for actions he’s taken at the CFPB, such as loosening regulation of the payday lending industry.

As a congressman representing South Carolina, Mulvaney received $63,000 in contributions from payday lenders.

Politics is one thing, but Americans need to have confidence that the people who make and enforce regulations are not selling their decisions to the highest bidder.

Mulvaney should be transparent with the public about the reasons for decisions he’s made at the helm of the CFPB.

And if he can’t do that, President Trump should find another director for the agency.

Vetting is working

For all of his talk of the need for “extreme vetting” of people entering the United States, President Trump and his administration have offered little insight as to what that actually means. Nor has there been much evidence that current practices are inadequate to prevent extremists from entering the country.

A new report from the Cato Institute sheds some needed light on the country’s system for examining the lives of those who want to come into our country.

Looking at vetting failures before and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, report author David Bier argues that vetting failures, already rare prior to the attacks, have actually become even rarer.

In the 15 years leading up to the attacks, Bier identified 52 vetting failures. In contrast, Bier could only identify 13 vetting failures in the time since then.

While any number of deaths from vetting failures is obviously one death too many, it is both fortunate and significant that vetting processes have improved to the point where there are not only far fewer vetting failures, but also fewer deadly incidents from those failures.

Bier put the success of vetting systems into further context to highlight the fact that very few foreigners coming to our country with nefarious intent are actually slipping through the cracks.

“From 2002 to 2016, the vetting system failed and permitted the entry of 1 radicalized terrorist for every 29 million visa or status approvals,” the report noted. “This rate was 84 percent lower than during the 15-year period leading up to the 9/11 attacks.”

Since our vetting system is already working as intended, we have to agree with Bier that “if the government insists on additional security spending, it should prioritize domestic counterterrorism efforts over visa vetting.”

— The Orange County Register, Digital First Media