Mick Mulvaney demonstrated Friday that he won’t shy from confrontation with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau brushed off the Massachusetts senators’ detailed questions about his oversight of payday lending in a letter sent last week and made public Friday, and instead addressed only her insinuation that he eased up on payday lenders because they have contributed to his political campaigns.
Mulvaney invoked trial lawyers’ campaign donations to Warren, saying that he could easily argue that the contributions influenced one of Warren’s votes related to class-action lawsuits. “Shall we agree that such accusations are baseless and discuss policy matters…?” he asked.
“Civil discourse rests upon our reciprocal understanding that no matter how strongly we may disagree on matters of policy, we are motivated by principle and our mutual desire to serve the American people to the best of our abilities,” Mulvaney admonished Warren.
He didn’t answer any of the specific questions that Warren and other lawmakers sent in January, demanding a response by Feb. 9. The Democrats had questioned why Mulvaney had delayed a major Obama-era regulation on payday loans, dropped suits against payday lenders, and backed off an investigation into an installment lender.
They also suggested that Mulvaney’s actions were connected to the campaign support he received from the payday industry during his previous tenure as a congressman and member of the House Financial Services Committee.
On Friday, Warren and other Democrats responded by asking Mulvaney to answer the original questions by March 9.
“You have failed to provide any clarity on the rationale for your actions to harm consumers,” Warren wrote in a letter also signed by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “Our January 31, 2018 letter asked a series of simple questions about the reasons for your decisions on payday lenders. But you failed to answer a single one of our questions.”
The Trump-led CFPB is certain to face years of scrutiny from congressional Democrats, just as it received constant opposition and harassment from Republicans during the year’s Obama appointee Richard Cordray was in power.
Warren and others don’t recognize Mulvaney’s legitimacy as acting director. In their January letters, they instead identified Leandra English as the acting director. English has asserted that she is the acting director on the basis that the law that created the bureau provided for the deputy director to become acting director during a vacancy, and that the statute overrides existing law regarding the president’s ability to fill vacancies. Cordray appointed her deputy director just before leaving. A federal court has rejected English’s claim, a decision she has appealed.
