WASHINGTON _ The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau formally called on Congress to sharply reduce his agency's authority. Among the suggestions he delivered Monday: Any major new rules the bureau makes should be subject to lawmakers' approval.
"The bureau is far too powerful, with previous little oversight of its activities," Mick Mulvaney _ who has been an outspoken critic of the agency since before President Donald Trump appointed him as its acting director last year _ said in submitting his first report to Congress.
"The power wielded by the director of the bureau could all too easily be used to harm consumers, destroy businesses, or arbitrarily remake American financial markets," Mulvaney said as he sent the bureau's semiannual report to lawmakers ahead of hearings next week.
"I'm requesting that Congress make four changes to the law to establish meaningful accountability for the bureau," he said.
Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said Mulvaney's proposals would take away the bureau's independence.
"He's made it clear that he does not want a strong agency to protect consumers," Mierzwinski said. "He wants a weak agency that payday lenders and Wall Street can roughshod over."
In addition to requesting that the agency be unable to enact any major new consumer protection rules without Congress' approval, Mulvaney wants the agency's independent funding stream to be turned off.
Instead of receiving money directly from the Federal Reserve, a cash flow designed to insulate the bureau from political interference, Mulvaney wants the funding to go through the congressional appropriations process. Republican critics of the bureau have been pushing for that change since the agency was created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, arguing it would provide more accountability.
The bureau's supporters, including consumer advocates, argue that other financial regulators are funded outside the congressional appropriations process and that Republicans want the change to starve the agency of funding.
Mulvaney, a former Republican congressman who also serves as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, highlighted the funding issue in January when he requested $0 for the bureau from the Federal Reserve for the second quarter of the fiscal year.
At the time, Mulvaney said that the bureau had enough money on hand to cover its anticipated $145 million in expenses for the quarter and that he planned to slash the bureau's reserve fund.
The other two changes Mulvaney wants Congress to make are to "ensure that the director answers to the president in the exercise of his executive authority" and to create an independent inspector general for the bureau.
The request for lawmakers to put the independent bureau directly under the authority of the president appears to be in response to a court ruling.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 7-3 in January that Congress acted appropriately in mandating that the bureau's single director _ who serves a five-year term after being nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate _ can be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.
The decision reversed a 2-1 ruling in 2016 by a three-judge panel of the court that found that the bureau's structure violated the Constitution's separation of powers because it limited the president's authority. That ruling said the solution was to strike down the law's "for cause" provision, meaning that the president could remove the bureau's director for any reason, as with other executive branch appointees.
Mulvaney, who as a lawmaker called the bureau a "joke ... in a sad, sick kind of way," has been working to remake the agency as its acting director. He has halted some enforcement efforts, changed the bureau's mission statement to emphasize the need to address "outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome regulations" and launched a review of its entire operation.
Mulvaney's appointment as acting director is being challenged in court by Leandra English, the bureau deputy director who contends she is the rightful acting director.
A federal judge denied English's request for a temporary restraining order and later a preliminary injunction to remove Mulvaney as acting director and install her instead. She is appealing the injunction denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
