President Trump’s nominee for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director gained committee approval Thursday, bringing her closer to a powerful position overseeing mortgages, credit cards, payday loans, and all other consumer financial products.
The Senate Banking Committee voted on partisan lines to advance the nomination of Kathy Kraninger, previously a Trump budget aide and congressional staffer, as director of the agency.
With a favorable vote from the full Senate, Kraninger would replace Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney, who has been running the CFPB on an acting basis. White House officials aim for Kraninger to pursue the same deregulatory agenda that Mulvaney has set in his months in the post.
In effect, her confirmation for a five-year term would cement the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse the mission of the CFPB, which was created by Democrats in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law to aggressively police banks, payday lenders, and other financial firms. Accordingly, Democrats have vociferously opposed her nomination.
The CFPB was the “most polarizing part of Dodd-Frank, and it is not surprising that the confirmation votes of Richard Cordray and now Kathy Kraninger are now contentious,” said Idaho’s Mike Crapo, the committee’s Republican chairman, referring to Obama’s CFPB director.
Congressional Republicans have sought to abolish or weaken the agency, arguing that it is unaccountable and that it chokes off credit for people who need it.
Democrats, meanwhile, have tried to slow Mulvaney’s agenda and defend the bureau’s current setup in Congress. Mulvaney “has been sabotaging and undermining the bureau,” Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto said, adding that, under Trump, “the bureau’s been repurposed to serve the interests of Wall Street and payday lenders.”
In opposing Kraninger, Democrats honed in on her lack of experience in finance or consumer protection.
“She has no, zero, relevant experience,” ranking Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio said at Thursday’s vote.
Additionally, Democrats placed blame on Kraninger for the Trump administration’s highly controversial zero-tolerance immigration policy and its response to the hurricane damage suffered by Puerto Rico. Her role in the Office of Management and Budget touched on both of those issues, although she avoided discussing during her confirmation hearing what involvement she had with the controversies.
The American Bankers Association called for the full Senate to consider Kraninger’s nomination, citing her management experience. “She committed to satisfying the Bureau’s mandate of ensuring consumers have access to financial products and services that are ‘fair, transparent and competitive,'” the group’s president, Rob Nichols, said in a statement. “We welcome that commitment and her pledge to maintain transparency and accountability if confirmed.”
The Banking Committee also voted to approve former Treasury official Kimberly Reed to be president of the Export-Import Bank, the export credit agency that has been hamstrung for most of the Trump era because of conservative opposition.
Additionally, the panel to advance a nominee, former GOP staffer Elad Roisman, to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and another former GOP staffer and industry official, Michael Bright, to head Ginnie Mae. It also approved lower-level nominees for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Treasury Department.
