Is Trump Plotting to Keep His Budget Director in Charge of the CFPB?

The White House puts forward a replacement nominee who could extend Mick Mulvaney’s deregulatory push.

Evan Vucci/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Saturday, the White House announced it will nominate Kathy Kraninger, associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Wall Street watchdog created in the wake of the financial crisis to monitor big banks.

Both the announcement and the nominee stunned consumer advocates—because it’s unusual to make such an important announcement on a weekend, and Kraninger is a little-known White House aide with a long public service record but zero financial policy experience.

“We feared a nominee who was more focused on protecting industry than consumers. But we really didn’t expect one that knew nothing at all about this critically important area,” says Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center. “Her lack of background and credentials in consumer protection are pretty stark.”

The choice has lent credence to a theory that the White House’s nominee is part of a plot aimed at sustaining the tenure of its current director as he undertakes a campaign to chip away the agency’s regulatory powers. The CFPB is now led part time by the director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney—a longtime foe of the bureau. As a congressman, Mulvaney co-sponsored legislation to weaken the agency and even shut it down altogether. Since taking the CFPB’s helm as acting director in November following the departure of Obama-era director Richard Cordray, Mulvaney has taken major steps to dilute the agency’s power—from promising to decrease staff by 20 percent to dismissing advisory boards, relaxing regulations on predatory lenders, and even changing the agency’s name.

Under federal law, Mulvaney is required to step down as acting director by the end of this week, June 22, unless the administration sends a nominee for a permanent director to the Senate. However, once a nominee is pending confirmation, Mulvaney can stay on as acting director until the process concludes. Republicans could delay her hearing, or the inexperienced nominee could move ahead into a drawn-out confirmation battle. But either way, the law could allow Mulvaney to continue leading the agency. 

“This is a scheme to keep Mick Mulvaney at the helm of the CFPB,” said Yana Miles, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, in an emailed statement. “If the Administration was serious about protecting consumers, the President would have nominated someone qualified last January instead of someone unqualified in June—just days before the CFPB nomination deadline.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones about whether Kraninger’s inexperience was part of its nomination calculus. In a Saturday statement, a White House spokesperson said Kraninger “will bring a fresh perspective and much-needed management experience to the BCFP, which has been plagued by excessive spending, dysfunctional operations and politicized agendas.”

If the Senate rejects the administration’s nominee, Mulvaney can stay on as director for up to 210 days awaiting a new nominee from the White House. Then, if a new nominee is put forth, rinse and repeat—the whole process starts over again. Mulvaney himself has said he expects to stay at the CFPB until the end of the year.

“If you were really trying to game it, and you had the cooperation of the Senate in so doing, you could drag it out for over a year, keeping the acting director in place,” says Andrew Rudalevidge, a government professor at Bowdoin College.

Industry observers have noted that even if Kraninger is confirmed, the White House would still get a CFPB head amenable to its goal of reining in the bureau. “You could speculate that this is extending the clock,” Rudalevidge says. “Either way, it’s going to lead to a result that meets the president’s preferences better than Mr. Cordray did.”

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate