Mulvaney Calls for Key Changes to CFPB in Semi-Annual Report

In a semi-annual report to Congress released today, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Mick Mulvaney called on Congress to make four changes to the Dodd-Frank Act that would “establish meaningful accountability for the bureau.” Mulvaney recommended that Congress subject the bureau to the congressional appropriations process, approve major rules, make the director position answerable to the president and create an independent inspector general for the bureau.

“As has been evident since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act, the bureau is far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities,” Mulvaney said. “By structuring the bureau the way it has, Congress established an agency primed to ignore due process and abandon the rule of law in favor of bureaucratic fiat and administrative absolutism.”

Mulvaney also recapped the bureau’s work between April and September 2017 — prior to his appointment as acting director — and outlined plans for future efforts, including the series of requests for information on how the CFPB is fulfilling its statutory obligations.

He noted that the bureau will move forward with a proposed rulemakings on revisiting final payday lending rule, as well as others related to Regulation CC, the final debt collection rule and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. It will also issue final rules on the annual notice requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the disclosure of the bureau’s records and information and an amendment related to the use of closing disclosures to determine good faith disclosure of estimated closing costs, which ABA has long supported.