Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s choice to serve as acting director of the CFPB, assumed control of the agency Monday, Nov. 27, 2017, and quickly established a dramatically different direction for the agency, one far less hostile to the financial services industry. In his first press conference as acting director, one week ago, Mulvaney shook things up while trying to strike a more balanced approach, one far less hostile towards the financial services community. “This is an ordinary course of business in Washington, DC. What you’re witnessing today at the CFPB happens at every single agency every couple of years, which is a transition,” he said. [Includes a timeline chart.]
During his first press conference as acting director of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney spelled out the charge he was given in taking control of the agency, and elaborated upon his view of the bureau as a regulatory entity that has overstepped its bounds. “[President Trump] wants me to fix it,” Mulvaney began. “He wants me to get it back to the point where it can protect people without trampling on capitalism, without choking off the access to financial services that are so critical to so many folks.” He then cited the “many folks who are in the lower and middle classes, folks who are trying to start their own businesses, people who are trying to break out, people who are ...
The biggest CFPB story of the year – which appointee is authorized to head up the agency in the case of a resignation of the director – involves competing legal arguments interpretations of two federal laws.Deputy Director Leandra English is relying on the CFPB succession provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, while Acting Director Mick Mulvaney and the Trump White House are relying on the text of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The crux of their respective arguments to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia follows. English’s brief to the court declared: “The Dodd-Frank Act is clear on this point: It mandates that the deputy director ‘shall serve as the acting director in the absence or unavailability of the
One of the most surprising aspects of the sudden drama associated with the departure of Richard Corday as director of the CFPB – who started at the bureau with a cloud of controversy and left it the same way – is that the bureau’s own general counsel, Mary McLeod, supported the position of the Trump administration in the struggle for control of the agency. “Questions have been raised whether the president has the authority under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to designate Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, as the acting director of CFPB following the resignation of Richard Cordray ..., even if the deputy director otherwise could act under 12 U.S.C. §5491(b)(5),” she said in a memorandum ...
Now that U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly has affirmed Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s choice to serve as acting director of the CFPB, one unresolved issue is the fate of his rival for the throne, Leandra English, whom Richard Cordray selected to be deputy director in his last official act before resigning. It’s possible that Mulvaney could flat out fire her, and he intimated last week that was a possibility – his argument being that she didn’t show up for work that day. However, multiple press accounts claimed she did in fact report for duty. One attorney closely following the case conceded, “I think she’s in a tough spot. While she could continue to press her claims in the hope of ...
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