Trump consumer chief Mick Mulvaney ousts Obama-era advisory panel members
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The White House says budget director Mick Mulvaney has the legal authority to lead a consumer protection agency that has two people jockeying for control. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also defended the president’s Pocohantas joke. (Nov. 27)
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To President Trump’s consumer chief, the latest in a series of changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is part of a normal transition from one White House administration to another.
To some consumer advocates, the moves instead represent a hostile takeover that undermines the federal watchdog’s mission.
Mick Mulvaney, the consumer bureau’s acting director as well as the White House budget chief, Wednesday oversaw a significant shake-up of the bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board and similar advisory councils for community banks and credit unions.
The groups will be reconstituted with “new, smaller memberships,” according to an email that bureau officials sent to the groups’ members.
Scheduled for completion in the fall, the changes also will include regional town hall meetings, roundtable discussions at the consumer bureau’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and elsewhere, and other efforts in a “new strategy to increase high-quality feedback” on consumer issues, the email said.
“We don’t plan on having any additional meetings until the appointment of new board and council members,” the email added. “Until such time, existing advisory board and council members may continue to serve their existing terms.”
There was no quiet leave-taking for the jilted advisory group members, many of them veterans of local consumer protection groups across the nation.
“Firing current members of the advisory board is a huge red flag in this administration’s ongoing erosion of critical consumer financial protections that help average families,” said Chi Chi Wu, a member of the Consumer Advisory Board and an attorney for the National Consumer Law Center.
The Boston-based law center added that advisory group members were told “that their terms were terminated and they were not permitted to re-apply.”
The announcement came two days after 11 consumer advocates and academics held a telephone conference with media representatives to voice concern over the cancellation of the only two Consumer Advisory Board meetings previously scheduled for 2018.
“Firing the current (Consumer Advisory Board) members is another move indicating Acting Director Mick Mulvaney is only interested in obtaining views from his inner circle, and has no interest in hearing the perspective of those who work with struggling American families,” said Ann Baddour, who chaired the advisory board.
John Czwartacki, the consumer bureau’s chief communications officer, Insisted the federal watchdog “has not fired anyone.” The bureau will “continue to meet its statutory obligation to convene the Consumer Advisory Board meetings as well as enhanced forms of public outreach and engagement,” he said.
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The first event, scheduled for Friday in Topeka, Kan., is a town hall gathering with an agenda that calls for Mulvaney, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, consumer groups and others to discuss ways to fight financial exploitation of America’s senior citizens. Â
The complaining members of the Consumer Advisory Board “seem more concerned about protecting their taxpayer-funded junkets to Washington, D.C. and being wined and dined by the Bureau than protecting consumers,” added Czwartacki.
Nonetheless, the ousters followed repeated questions and criticism of Mulvaney’s record on protecting consumers from some consumer advocates.
The National Consumer Law Center noted pointedly that town hall meetings and smaller roundtable discussions were “two long-standing practices” during the tenure of Richard Cordray, the consumer bureau’s director during the administration of President Barack Obama.
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Why should the average American consumer care who leads the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? We explain.
USA TODAY
The federal watchdog has announced only one major enforcement effort since Trump named Mulvaney the bureau’s acting director last fall. In April, the consumer bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency hit Wells Fargo with $1 billion in record-setting penalties for mortgage and auto loan violations that saddled the bank’s customers with extra fees.
Last week, the consumer bureau joined with payday lenders in asking a court to delay a lawsuit that challenges tougher regulations the federal watchdog enacted on the short-term, small-dollar loan industry during the Obama administration. The request for a postponement until the consumer bureau completes a new review of the regulations could delay the rules from taking effect for months or years.
Bank and credit card companies that served on the watchdog’s Consumer Advisory Board cumulatively contributed $38,000 to Mulvaney’s campaigns when he was a congressman from South Carolina, according to Allied Progress, an organization that has frequently criticized his leadership.
Although Mulvaney often attacked the consumer bureau before becoming its acting director, he has dismissed claims that he now is “gutting” the federal watchdog from within as an inaccurate narrative repeated by those who can’t accept Donald Trump’s presidency.
“Yes, I mean to change the bureau. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. That’s exactly what happens to every agency when a new administration appoints new leadership,” Mulvaney wrote in February on USA TODAY’s editorial page. “And we’re looking for a lighter regulatory hand: bringing common sense and balance to government regulation is a central tenet of this administration.”
Follow USA TODAY reporter Kevin McCoy on Twitter: @kmccoynyc
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