Consumer contempt
Mick Mulvaney was never the right choice to run a consumer agency he despises. Now he’s showing even more contempt for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by asking bankers to help gut the agency and revealing his pay-to-play mind-set.
Mulvaney, who is President Trump’s budget director and interim head of the consumer bureau, spoke to a gathering of banking officials, a group he’s charged with policing. Keep up the pressure on lawmakers, he urged them, adding, “They will never know as much about your issues as you do.” Join him in supporting changes proposed in Congress to sever the bureau’s financial independence and curb its power, Mulvaney encouraged the bankers.
Since becoming director, he’s put the brakes on investigations of consumer law violations such as payday and auto lending practices. His speech this week in Washington hit a new level of obstruction by inviting the financial sector to weaken the watchdog agency, which was created in 2010 in the wake of the mortgage meltdown.
Mulvaney added another flourish that may be as swampy as a Trump appointee can get. While he was a congressman from South Carolina, his office had a “hierarchy’’ when it came to meetings with favor seekers, he said. “If you were a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you were a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you,” he said. He clarified slightly by saying home-district constituents could always get a face-to-face.
His arrogance and dismissiveness of the mission make him unfit to run an important and needed public agency.