Two acting directors claim command of consumer protection agency
WASHINGTON — Two acting directors of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started work Monday morning — one chosen by President Donald Trump, the other named by the departing director who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
It was another battle in the ongoing war between the Trump White House and the permanent class of Washington bureaucrats who generally oppose the administration. And it belied the notion that two heads are better than one.
Budget director Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s pick to head the bureau pending appointment of a permanent replacement, showed up at 7:30 a.m. Monday. He promptly occupied the former office of Richard Cordray, who resigned as director at midnight Friday, and sent out an email inviting staff to come by to say hello and grab a donut.
Meanwhile, Leandra English, Cordray’s choice to replace him in the interim, met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Capitol Hill.
English apparently did not show up for work at the bureau, but she did send a memo to staff in which she wrote, “It is an honor to work with all of you.”
Both Mulvaney and English signed their memos “Acting Director.”
Both would-be acting directors cited legal language that bolstered their case as the legitimate, if temporary, heir to Cordray.
Dodd-Frank Act
On Friday, hours before Cordray resigned, the bureau announced that English would replace David Silberman, who had been acting deputy director. English pointed out that the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 specified that the bureau’s deputy director “serves as the acting director in the absence or unavailability of the director.”
On Sunday, English submitted a brief with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that requested a temporary restraining order to keep Mulvaney from heading the consumer bureau. The brief was drafted by a private Washington-based law firm, Gupta Wessler.
On Tuesday, English plans to show up at the CFPB with Warren, who advocated for the bureau’s creation, to demand that Mulvaney step aside.
As the president met with World War II heroes, two Navajo Code Talkers, Monday afternoon, he pointedly referred to Warren as Pocahontas — the Twitter name he uses to needle the Massachusetts senator, who has claimed Native American ancestry.
On MSNBC, Warren responded that it was “deeply unfortunate that the president of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur.”
Asked about Warren’s reaction at Monday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders responded, “I think what most people find offensive is Sen. Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.”
Sanders also said that the CFPB general counsel whom Cordray hired, Mary McLeod, agreed with the administration that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act gave the president authority to put Mulvaney at the helm temporarily.
“I advise all Bureau personnel to act consistently with the understanding that Director Mulvaney is the Acting Director of the CFPB,” McLeod wrote in a memo.
Mulvaney’s two jobs
Mulvaney will continue as director of the Office of Management and Budget while he also steers the CFPB, an agency he dismissed in a 2014 interview as a “joke.” Mulvaney also told the Credit Union Times, “some of us would like to get rid of it.”
As he addressed reporters at the bureau, Mulvaney refused to pull back those remarks. He said he considered the consumer agency to be “an awful example of a bureaucracy that has gone wrong.” He later added, “They would frighten most of you.”
Mulvaney also announced a 30-day hiring freeze, as well as a 30-day freeze on discretionary payouts from the civil penalty fund. He said he expects to work both jobs about three days per week.
From the Senate floor, Schumer explained his opposition to Mulvaney: “The only reason the Trump administration would put Mr. Mulvaney forward for this position would be so that he can rot the agency from the inside.”
Schumer also dismissed Mulvaney as “the latest in a long line of Trojan-horse candidates selected by this White House to undermine federal agencies from within.”
Indeed, during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, then White House chief strategist Steve Bannon revealed that a major goal of the Trump administration was “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Sanders said she expected the bureau to do a better job of protecting consumers under Mulvaney. Asked where the CFPB failed, the press office later sent out tweets in which Sanders criticized the agency for not protecting community banks from frivolous lawsuits and making it difficult for auto dealers to customize loans.
In a statement, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., asserted her office will recognize English as acting director. “If President Trump wishes to have an alternate person run the bureau, he should nominate that individual and provide them with a chance to be considered before the Senate.”
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
More details
A federal judge held an emergency hearing but declined to rule immediately Monday on a request to bar President Donald Trump from installing an acting director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in place of the agency's No. 2 leader, an Obama administration holdover.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of Washington, D.C., heard arguments by the bureau deputy director Leandra English, who filed a lawsuit Sunday calling herself the "rightful acting director" according to a 2010 Dodd-Frank act, which established the influential watchdog agency.
Kelly said he would wait until government attorneys supplemented their arguments in a 40-minute hearing by filing a formal, written response Monday night defending Trump's choice, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, whose appointment they said was authorized under an earlier, 1988 law governing presidential vacancies in general.
–The Washington Post
