Mick Mulvaney told a panel of senators Thursday that while he was required by law to appear before them as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he doesn’t have to answer any of their questions, and could ignore them if he wanted.
“While I have to be here by statute, I don’t think I have to answer your questions,” Mulvaney said at the hearing’s outset.
Mulvaney was making the point that the law authorizing the CFPB says that the director should appear before the congressional banking committees twice a year when it publishes its semiannual report. But the text doesn’t specifically say that the director needs to answer questions. In other parts of the law that require regulators to appear before Congress, the text does explicitly say that the person in question should answer questions.
Mulvaney, who also serves as the director of the Office of Management and Budget and previously was a conservative Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, explained that he was trying to make a point about the law, not to avoid fielding questions.
“Either that’s a mistake and it needs to be fixed, or it was done on purpose, and it needs to be fixed,” he said of the law not requiring him to answer questions. He explained that the bureau should be changed to be made more accountable to Congress.
He had made a similar point Wednesday at a hearing in the House, and decided to press it at Thursday’s hearing based on the surprised response he received.
