Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA
Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since November:
Since then, he has frozen all new investigations and slowed down existing inquiries by requiring employees to produce detailed justifications….But he wants Congress to go further and has urged it to wrest funding of the independent watchdog from the Federal Reserve, a move that would give lawmakers — and those with access to them — more influence on the bureau’s actions. On Tuesday, he implored the financial services industry to help support the legislative changes he has requested.
He concluded the speech, which included an appeal to diminish the bureau’s power, by describing the two types of people he was most responsive to as a congressman — constituents and lobbyists who contributed to his campaign.
Please proceed, Mr. Mulvaney:
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
That seems bracingly clear. Most politicians don’t have either the arrogance or the cluelessness it would take to admit this in public, but Mulvaney does. Kudos.
