FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feb. 13, 2018

CONTACT:

Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org, (202) 251-6700

Administration Seeks Sabotage of CFPB Via Budget, ‘Strategic Plan’

“The administration’s budget and Mick Mulvaney’s ‘strategic plan’ for the CFPB are transparent attempts to stop the agency from doing what it was designed to do: actually protect consumers,” said Lisa Donner, executive director, Americans for Financial Reform. “As allies of Wall Street and payday lenders in the administration make their presence more and more felt, consumers will experience the impact in the form of a more abusive and unfair financial services marketplace.”

Background:

The White House has proposed a budget (p. 189) that would eliminate the CFPB’s independent funding mechanism, a measure Congress put in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to insulate the agency, like other banking regulators, from undue political interference. The budget document also repeats numerous long-since-disproven myths about the agency. Only Congress can change the law governing CFPB funding, and it cannot be done through the budget process.

Mick Mulvaney, the White House official whom President Trump has sought to install as acting director of CFPB, issued a new “strategic plan” for the CFPB. The document is a long-form version of his rewritten mission statement that emphasizes the need to cut “burdensome regulations,” a job that doesn’t jibe with its obvious charge to protect consumers in the financial services sector.

###