Warren Calls on Colleagues to Vote Against Nomination of Kathy Kraninger to Serve as Director of the CFPB
Eleven-Page Dear Colleague Letter: "A vote to confirm Ms. Kraninger is a vote to defang the consumer watchdog."Letter includes findings from Warren's questioning during Kraninger's confirmation hearing and report detailing Kraninger's disastrous record of failure at OMB
Washington, DC - United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a detailed 11-page letter to all 99 of her colleagues in the Senate, urging them to vote against the nomination of Kathy Kraninger to serve as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
In the letter, Senator Warren highlights Ms. Kraninger's lack of relevant consumer financial experience, her full-throated endorsement of Interim CFPB Director Mulvaney's work to undermine protections for students, seniors, and servicemembers, and her disastrous tenure as an official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The letter addresses concerns about Ms. Kraninger's time at OMB and her role in some of the Administration's most troubling policies, including the child separation efforts at the Southern border and the catastrophic response to Puerto Rico's recovery from Hurricane Maria.
In the rest of the letter, Senator Warren provides a detailed review of Mr. Mulvaney's one-year tenure at the CFPB. Ms. Kraninger has said that she cannot identify any action that Interim CFPB Director Mulvaney has taken with which she disagrees. This review shows that Mr. Mulvaney has:
- Eroded CFPB enforcement efforts by failing to effectively penalize companies that violate consumer protection laws and overseeing a significant decline in CFPB enforcement actions.
- Turned the CFPB from an independent, non-partisan watchdog to a politicized and biased regulator that is more aligned with corporations and campaign donors than consumers.
- Decimated agency enforcement tools by freezing data collection, limiting agency funding, and threatening to eliminate key consumer complaint data that the public uses to get help with their consumer problems and avoid problematic companies.
- Dismantled civil rights protections and failed to enforce laws designed to prevent discrimination by financial institutions.
In its first six years of existence, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recovered returned nearly $12 billion to more than 29 million consumers who had been cheated by financial institutions. The agency also handled more than one million consumer complaints - getting answers for American families in fifteen days or fewer in the vast majority of the cases.
Sen. Warren concluded: "If Ms. Kraninger is confirmed to a five-year term, she would continue Mr. Mulvaney's efforts to undermine the agency's consumer protection mission and return to the pre-crisis approach towards consumer protection that cost millions of working families their homes, jobs, and savings. I respectfully urge you to vote no on Ms. Kraninger's nomination."
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