The Senate confirmed Kathy Kraninger Thursday to be the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, replacing Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney in the important post responsible for overseeing mortgages, credit cards, payday loans, and other financial products.
Kraninger was confirmed in a party-line vote, 50 to 49. She is appointed to a full five year term.
In the role, Kraninger, who lacks experience in finance, is expected to carry out the Trump administration’s agenda for lightening regulatory burdens. Democrats opposed her fiercely on the grounds that she would undercut the purpose of the agency, which was designed by then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and signed into law by former President Barack Obama to regulate consumer finance.
Industry groups praised Kraninger’s confirmation.
[Opinion: Kathy Kraninger will reform the CFPB and bring consumers relief]
“We’re pleased to have a new permanent director leading the BCFP, as credit unions and other parts of the financial services marketplace need stability at the bureau,” said Jim Nussle, the president and CEO of the Credit Union National Association, in a statement.
Democrats, especially Warren, now a Democratic senator for Massachusetts, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, attempted to tie Kraninger’s nomination to President Trump’s controversial child separation immigration policy and the Trump administration’s handling of the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico last year. Kraninger oversaw budget and execution of policy for the Department of Homeland Security in her previous role at the Office of Management and Budget.
But those attacks did not move Republicans, who saw Kraninger as a viable replacement to her current boss, Mulvaney, who is the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney has also acted as director of the CFPB since late 2017, after Obama appointee Richard Cordray left to run for governor of Ohio.
“This last year has been an important step in the history of the Bureau as we take our place among the most notable regulatory bodies of our country — and frankly the world,” said Mulvaney in a statement. “Like all transitions, it was not always as smooth as we would’ve all liked, but the Bureau has emerged stronger for it. I wish Kathy the best of luck, and I look forward to the next five years of her leadership.”
An outspoken conservative and critic of the bureau’s during his former member of the House of Representatives, Mulvaney sparred with Warren and other Democrats during his tenure at the bureau, and some of the agency’s enforcement activity, which he argued at times was overaggressive.
Democrats and consumer advocates saw that as defanging the bureau on behalf of payday lenders and other parts of the financial industry.
“Mulvaney’s tenure at the CFPB wasn’t public service — it was service to predatory lenders,” said Yana Miles, senior legislative counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy nonprofit group, in a statement. “Kathy Kraninger’s inexperience and endorsement of Mulvaney’s destructive policies are gifts to bad financial actors who are hell-bent on using their predatory business model to rip off vulnerable consumers, especially consumers of color.”
