Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) are still committed to their congressional job of oversight. Last week Mick Mulvaney, the part-time head of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, gave a former campaign donor a big break by dropping a predatory lending investigation against it. Warren and Waters are questioning that as well as more of Mulvaney's "recent actions that benefit payday and installment lenders."
These actions have unwound years of careful work by the Consumer Bureau and benefited an industry that has close ties to Mr. Mulvaney and that has contributed more than $60,000 to his political campaigns.
Just in the last month, Mulvaney has halted implementation of the agency's "Payday Rule" designed to protect consumers from predatory lending practices, withdrew a lawsuit against four deceptive payday lenders who charged interest rates approaching 1000%, and discontinued an investigation into World Acceptance Corporation, a high-cost installment lender, which engaged in aggressive collection practices and trapped customers into years of debt. […]
In the letter, Ranking Members Warren and Waters expressed concern that the Consumer Bureau's recent actions may be connected to Mr. Mulvaney's close ties with the payday loan industry, which gave him nearly $63,000 in campaign contributions, including $4,500 from the World Acceptance Corporation political action committee. Mr. Mulvaney has yet to answer Senator Warren's November 28 inquiry about his ethics arrangements and recusals.
Gee, a Trump appointee grifting. Who'd have thunk it? The swamp gets stinkier by the day. Still, Trump's first HHS Secretary, Tom Price, was forced out for his corruption. And just this week his CDC Director, Brenda Fitzgerald, resigned amid reports that she traded tobacco stock while in charge of the agency tasked with reducing tobacco use. It could happen, here, too.
It should happen here. The only reason Mulvaney was put in charge of the CFPB—and the validity of that appointment is still being decided by a federal court—was to destroy it. The great Freedom Caucus, tea party former congressman, the populist, is there to carry the water for Wall Street and the loan sharks. He's doing his part to steal it all for the 1 percent, and Democrats aren't going to let that go on unchallenged.