Elizabeth Warren’s Boomerang She designed the CFPB to be unaccountable. Now she’s upset about it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warrens-boomerang-1521243165?mod=nwsrl_commentary_u_s_&cx_refModule=nwsrl#cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=ctrl&cx_artPos=6
Twitter is often the intellectual equivalent of a tavern at 2 a.m., but it has illuminating moments. An example came Friday when Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard populist, offered a hilarious commentary on her proudest political accomplishment—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“I’m giving @MickMulvaneyOMB one last chance to answer my questions about his actions at the @CFPB. If he won’t, he should be called immediately to testify under oath before my colleagues and me on the Senate Banking Committee,” the Senator thundered to her 4.3 million Twitter followers. Mick Mulvaney is the acting head of the CFPB, and it seems he is not suitably attentive to Ms. Warren’s demands.
Like Donald Trump, Ms. Warren might want to let an editor see her tweets before she sends them. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute quickly responded to Ms. Warren by tweeting, “If only the CFPB had any meaningful accountability to Congress . . .”
Someone get the smelling salts because Ms. Warren is down for the count.
As Mr. Murray and readers of these columns know, Ms. Warren designed the CFPB as an independent agency like no other precisely so it could ignore Congress. The bureau is funded not with an annual appropriation like the rest of the government, but by the Federal Reserve based on a request from the head of the CFPB. Congress thus can’t use its constitutional power of the purse to enforce public accountability.
Unlike other so-called independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CFPB also isn’t composed of a bipartisan set of commissioners. It’s a one man show whose five-year term transcends elections and thus Administrations.
This worked fine for Ms. Warren when the bureau was run by her hand-picked successor, Richard Cordray. But when he left to run for Governor of Ohio, the path was open for President Trump to put Mr. Mulvaney in charge. And he is systematically reorienting the CFPB toward genuine consumer protection instead of business harassment and trial-lawyer enrichment. Now, if Ms. Warren wants to put the CFPB on a proper constitutional footing, we’ll be happy to offer suggestions.
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