Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Mick Mulvaney hasn’t completed any enforcement actions against financial firms since being appointed to the office in November, a fact that lawmakers are likely to raise when he appears at congressional hearings this week.
Under Mulvaney’s predecessor, the consumer watchdog agency would usually announce an enforcement action against a firm every few weeks, such as an order that a bank or lender to stop a certain practice and give money back to consumers.
The last such announcement on the CFPB website, though, is an action against Citibank related to student loan servicing from Nov. 21.
Mulvaney, the budget director whom President Trump appointed to simultaneously run the CFPB in November, said soon after taking office that the agency would no longer “push the envelope” in aggressively policing private companies.
He has reportedly eased off of investigations into payday lenders and other companies, although the bureau hasn’t commented on individual cases.
The CFPB didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding the lack of enforcement actions.
The agency has broad power to oversee consumer financial markets for fraud, deception, and abuse. It takes in complaints from members of the public who feel that they were ripped off by banks, loan collectors, student lenders, and other firms.
Democrats set up the CFPB as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and have regularly touted the billions that it has returned to consumers through enforcement actions in the years it has been open.
Republicans, however, have charged that the agency is too powerful and unaccountable and called for restructuring it to give Congress and the executive branch more control over it. Mulvaney testifies in the House on Wednesday and in the Senate on Thursday.
