Mick Mulvaney Replies to Elizabeth Warren

Daniel Press writes a letter-to-the-editor to The Wall Street Journal in response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s complaints in “Republicans Remain Silent as Mulvaney’s CFPB Ducks Oversight” (op-ed, March 29). 

There has never been such a powerful and unaccountable regulator in U.S. history as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was explicitly designed to be independent of congressional oversight through its funding and its structure, with an all-powerful director who is checked neither by the president’s executive removal power nor a bipartisan board.

Sen. Warren charges that Republicans have suddenly fallen silent on bringing accountability to the CFPB now that one of their own is in charge. That’s untrue. Only two weeks ago, Rep. Dennis Ross (R., Fla.) introduced a bipartisan bill to impose accountability by replacing the single director of the CFPB with a bipartisan five-person commission, the standard structure for an independent agency. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and other Republicans sought changes to the CFPB in the financial reform bill that passed the Senate earlier this month. But their Democratic counterparts, including Sen. Warren, refuse to compromise on changing the bureau’s structure.

When it comes to the CFPB, Sen. Warren has made her own bed. Now, unless she decides to join her GOP colleagues on legislation to reform the CFPB’s structure, she has to lie in it.

Originally published at The Wall Street Journal.