Mulvaney Asks Congress to Limit Power of CFPB

Acting Director Mick Mulvaney says that the CFPB is “far too powerful” in the agency’s semi-annual report.

Mick Mulvaney, the Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, asked Congress in the agency’s semi-annual report to “establish meaningful accountability for the Bureau.”

Mulvaney wrote:

As has been evident since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Bureau is far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities. Per the statute, in the normal course the Bureau’s Director simultaneously serves in three roles: as a one-man legislature empowered to write rules to bind parties in new ways; as an executive officer subject to limited control by the President; and as an appellate judge presiding over the Bureau’s in-house court-like adjudications.

He went on to say the structure and powers of the agency are not something the country’s founders would even recognize because “Congress established an agency primed to ignore due process and abandon the rule of law in favor of bureaucratic fiat and administrative absolutism.”

He asked Congress to do the following to reign in the agency’s powers:

  1. Fund the Bureau through Congressional appropriations
  2. Require legislative approval of major Bureau rules
  3. Ensure that the Director answers to the President in the exercise of executive authority
  4. Create an independent Inspector General for the Bureau

A copy of the report is included below.

CFPB Semi Annual Report Spring 2018 by FedSmith Inc. on Scribd

About the Author

Ian Smith is one of the co-founders of FedSmith.com. He has over 20 years of combined experience in media and government services, having worked at two government contracting firms and an online news and web development company prior to his current role at FedSmith.