Elizabeth Warren Furious About Lack Of CFPB Oversight . . . That She Designed
Smack down: “If only the CFPB had any meaningful accountability to Congress…”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is fighting mad. Her pet project, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is completely out of her control, and she’s taken to Twitter to express her latest dissatisfaction with Trump-appointed CFPB head Mick Mulvaney.
For background on Warren’s resistance to President Trump’s pick, see our prior posts:
- Elizabeth Warren furious over Trump’s CFPB appointment
- General counsel for the CFPB disagrees with Elizabeth Warren on agency head replacement
- Court Sides with Trump in Bitter Fight with CFPB and Elizabeth Warren
Warren was instrumental in assuring that the CFPB operate without Congressional oversight and its director, unlike members of the Cabinet, do not serve at the pleasure of the president and can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Warren has taken to Twitter to complain . . . apparently forgetting her own role in the very lack of Congressional oversight she’s attacking.
Since assuming control of the @CFPB, @MickMulvaneyOMB has done favor after favor for payday lenders and the banking industry without any legal justification – and he won’t answer basic questions about his actions. https://t.co/WNW62Qhb6s
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 16, 2018
The Washington Examiner reports:
Liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren demanded answers from Mick Mulvaney about his management of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Friday, specifically about his oversight of banks, payday lenders and college credit cards.
The Massachusetts Democrat already has gone a few rounds with the Trump acting director over his brief tenure at the CFPB, the regulatory agency she helped create.
On Friday she sent him another letter, this one 17 pages long, demanding responses to 105 questions that she and other senators had asked in nine previous letters without receiving satisfactory answers.
“”That is an unacceptable track record for a public official,” Warren wrote.
She also accused him of rolling back consumer protections, undermining the non-political staff at the CFPB, and undermining the bureau’s independence.
I’m giving @MickMulvaneyOMB one last chance to answer my questions about his actions at the @CFPB. If he won’t, he should be called immediately to testify under oath before my colleagues and me on the Senate Banking Committee. https://t.co/GguCdiWaLM
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 16, 2018
It’s hard to tell whether or not this is political grandstanding with 2020 in mind, or if she is seriously miffed that the CFPB doesn’t answer to Congress. Either way or both ways, it’s hilarious.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board has this to say:
Twitter is often the intellectual equivalent of a tavern at 2 a.m., but it has illuminating moments. An example came Friday when Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard populist, offered a hilarious commentary on her proudest political accomplishment—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“I’m giving @MickMulvaneyOMB one last chance to answer my questions about his actions at the @CFPB. If he won’t, he should be called immediately to testify under oath before my colleagues and me on the Senate Banking Committee,” the Senator thundered to her 4.3 million Twitter followers. Mick Mulvaney is the acting head of the CFPB, and it seems he is not suitably attentive to Ms. Warren’s demands.
Like Donald Trump, Ms. Warren might want to let an editor see her tweets before she sends them. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute quickly responded to Ms. Warren by tweeting, “If only the CFPB had any meaningful accountability to Congress . . .”
If only the CFPB had any meaningful accountability to Congress… https://t.co/e9wUsrhW7M
— Iain Murray (@ismurray) March 16, 2018
Someone get the smelling salts because Ms. Warren is down for the count.
As Mr. Murray and readers of these columns know, Ms. Warren designed the CFPB as an independent agency like no other precisely so it could ignore Congress. The bureau is funded not with an annual appropriation like the rest of the government, but by the Federal Reserve based on a request from the head of the CFPB. Congress thus can’t use its constitutional power of the purse to enforce public accountability.
Here’s a good question:
https://twitter.com/CliffordAsness/status/974977259928018944
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Comments
Just like Harry Reid removing the filibuster.
Democrats seem to believe that they can set new rules with impunity and then demand Republicans go back to the old rules as soon as they get in power.
Faux outrage from a faux person. Whod’a thunk?
Faux outrage from Fauxcahontas. FIFY
“He [Mulvaney] has refused to answer more than 100 of them. That’s unacceptable for a public official – the American people deserve answers.”
Couldn’t agree more. Give us the results of your DNA test results.
Designed as if the donk’s would be in power forever…karma is not kind.
Mulvaney needs to keep giving it good and hard.
”That is an unacceptable track record for a
public officialRepublican,” Warren wrote.FIFY
“I’m giving @MickMulvaneyOMB one last chance to answer my questions about his actions at the @CFPB. If he won’t, he should be called immediately to testify under oath before my colleagues and me on the Senate Banking Committee,”
Question: is the CFPB under obligation to obey such a summons under the law that Liz wrote?
I suspect the answer is “No”
Of course he is, just like anybody else.
Somebody be like hoisted on that petard thingy.
“By”, not “on”. A petard is a bomb. It isn’t tall enough for a person to be hoist up on it, but it’s certainly powerful enough for its explosion to hoist a person up in the air.
Thanks for the clarification. Anywho,here is the Wiki Dictionary explanation:
“Shakespeare’s phrase, “hoist with his own petard,” is an idiom that means “to be harmed by one’s own plan to harm someone else” or “to fall into one’s own trap”, implying that one could be lifted (blown) upward by one’s own bomb, or in other words, be foiled by one’s own plan.
It would be amazing if, when summoned to testify before them, Mulvaney replied with a blank sheet of paper featuring exactly in its center the word: “No”
“… undermining the non-political staff at the CFPB …”
Are there actually any non-political staff at the CFPB ?
White men over 40 received the opposite treatment. One attorney’s résumé was so spectacular that interviewers struggled to come up with plausible excuses to reject him. Finally, someone blurted out, “For the love of God, don’t hire him!” Cordray, who always spoke last, had no choice. He asked that the rejection letter be delayed until he could call the Supreme Court justice who had left a voicemail recommending the man.
http://www.nrostatic.com/article/443227/consumer-financial-protection-bureaus-tragic-failures
Proof that Odin is dead. Else, lightning would have struck Warren several times over by now.
Uncurl those fists, Fauxcaontas, if you want to keep your front teeth.
“Does it seem like both democrats and republicans take actions when in the majority that assume they’ll never again be in the minority? Are they just myopic, or is there some tactical logic I’m missing?”
It’s called ‘strike while the iron’s hot” and, yes, it is tactical. Because sure-as-hey there is no strategy beyond to moment to any of it. Not for nothing are they often derided as ‘posturing apes.’
Sounds like she is on the Warpath.