Democrats on Wednesday refused to recognize Mick Mulvaney as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and charged that President Trump appointed him illegally.
“I would like to say at the outset that Mr. Mulvaney is not the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Democrat Maxine Waters asserted at the start of the House Financial Services Committee hearing. “He was illegally appointed by President Trump.”
Mulvaney, who is also serving as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, was appointed as acting director in November. Democrats have argued that under the Dodd-Frank law, the bureau’s deputy director, Leandra English, should have become acting director, and English is pursuing legal action to be credited as the acting director.
“Just because I am engaging with you here at this hearing, that it is not an acknowledgment that you are legally entitled to be the acting director of the Bureau,” said Carolyn Maloney, another high-ranking Democrat on the panel.
Democrats also referred to the agency as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB, the name that previously appeared on its logo under its previous Democratic leadership.
Under Mulvaney, however, the logo was recently changed to read “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection,” the name technically bestowed on the agency in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that created it.
Republicans took care to refer to it under the new name — Mulvaney at one point started to say “the CFPB” and corrected himself to say “the bureau.”
During the hearing, Republican committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling argued that the bureau is unconstitutional and unaccountable.
Democrats, meanwhile, accused Mulvaney of trying to undermine it. Mulvaney previously served on the panel as one of its most conservative members.
“I have not burned the place down,” Mulvaney said Wednesday.
