The acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Mick Mulvaney, has responded to Senator Elizabeth Warren when she questioned his actions and leadership of the bureau.
On Thursday, Mulvaney sent Warren a letter that CFPB made public.
The letter said that he has a different take on what is actually happening at the bureau and suggested that her frustrations are a consequence of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, which she spearheaded.
Mulvaney said he too was frustrated with what he perceived to be a lack of responsiveness, transparency, and accountability at the bureau when he was a member of Congress and sat on the House Financial Services Committee.
“I encourage you to consider the possibility that the frustration you are experiencing now, and that which I had a few years ago, are both inevitable consequences of the fact that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act insulates the Bureau from virtually any accountability to the American people through their elected representatives,” he wrote.
According to The Hill, in a 17-page letter last month, Warren accused Mulvaney of ignoring or providing evasive, misleading or incomplete answers to 105 of the 125 questions she’s asked in nine letters since November 2017.
“That is an unacceptable track record for a public official,” she said in a statement at the time.
But in his response, Mulvaney suggested Warren is to blame for creating a bureau that’s less accountable than other government bureaucracies.
“You originally conceived of this agency as one that should be ‘free of legislative micromanaging’ and recently reiterated that ‘the whole idea’ of the Bureau was to ‘insulate it from political influence to the extent possible’, but I think most folks would interpret that exactly as I am suggesting: less accountable and less transparent,” he said.
Mulvaney also told Warren that she will need to wait for her questions to be answered.
“As to the 105 specific written interrogatories in your most recent letter: the law requires me to appear before Congress at semi-annual hearings,” he wrote. “I am looking forward to satisfying that statutory requirement this month. And I look forward to discussing these issues and my legislative recommendations for the Bureau when I testify before the Committee.”
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