Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Mick Mulvaney told staff Wednesday that he would be reorganizing it to diminish what was known as the Office of Students and Young Consumers.
That office will be folded into the bureau’s office of financial education, a move that could have implications for oversight of the $1.5 trillion student loan market and the watchdog agency’s efforts to regulate lenders and servicers — including its lawsuit against the servicer Navient, which it has accused of cheating borrowers.
Mulvaney, who also serves as President Trump’s budget director, announced the switch in a memo sent to staff Wednesday morning.
Since being appointed by Trump in November, Mulvaney, a conservative who previously served on the House Financial Services Committee as a representative of South Carolina, has sought to steer the agency away from what he has portrayed as overaggressive enforcement. Instead, he has said that the agency will follow the law and lessen regulatory burdens on financial companies.
He has restructured the bureau to lessen the role of a fair-lending office and now the student loan outfit as well.
The move drew criticism from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. “Mick Mulvaney has defaulted on his obligation to help the thousands of Americans who are struggling with unfair student loans,” Brown said.
In Wednesday’s memo, Mulvaney also announced that one of his political appointees, Brian Johnson, would serve as “my final stop on all things policy related.” Johnson previously served as an aide to Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the conservative chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who has been the top congressional critic of the CFPB. He has tried to advance legislation to functionally eliminate the agency.
