After the White House announced Saturday that President Donald Trump will nominate Kathy Kraninger to take over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), critics blasted her as “unqualified” and warned that if confirmed, she will continue Acting Director Mick Mulvaney’s efforts to defang the agency.
Mulvaney wants a puppet he can control at @CFPB. @KathyKraninger has ZERO relevant experience indicating she’s qualified to be America’s chief consumer advocate. #ProtectConsumers https://t.co/AktUQuAeag
— Allied Progress (@AlliedProgress) June 16, 2018
Bolstering those concerns—and defaulting to Mulvaney’s preferred acronym for the agency—White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said that Kraninger “will bring a fresh perspective and much-needed management experience to the BCFP, which has been plagued by excessive spending, dysfunctional operations, and politicized agendas. As a staunch supporter of free enterprise, she will continue the reforms of the bureau initiated by Acting Director Mick Mulvaney.”
Kraninger is currently associate director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—serving under Mulvaney, who is also the director of that agency. He has headed the CFPB since November, when his appointment by Trump was denounced as “an illegal affront to the American public” and “a gift to Wall Street grifters.” In his short tenure at the CFPB, Mulvaney has made several moves aimed at rolling back rules meant to protect consumers from the financial industry’s abuses.
Some argue that Kraninger’s nomination is simply a strategic decision by the Trump administration to keep Mulvaney in charge of the agency longer.
“This is nothing more than a desperate attempt by Mick Mulvaney to maintain his grip on the CFPB, so he can continue undermining its important consumer protection mission on behalf of the powerful Wall Street special interests and predatory lenders that have bankrolled his career,” declared Karl Frisch, executive director of the consumer watchdog group Allied Progress.
As Jim Puzzanghera explained for the Los Angeles Times:
By sending a nomination—any nomination—to the Senate for the bureau’s director, the White House ensures that Mulvaney can continue serving as the bureau’s acting director.
Under a time limit in the law by which he was appointed in November, Mulvaney would have been required to leave the consumer bureau job on June 22 if the White House hadn’t nominated someone to be the permanent director.
Kraninger’s nomination triggers a provision in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act that allows Mulvaney to serve until the Senate confirms or rejects the pick. That process could take months.
“The Senate should call the White House’s bluff and immediately move to hold confirmation hearings and vote to reject this wholly unqualified candidate,” Frisch concluded. “They need to send Mulvaney and the president a message that consumers deserve a champion not a stalking horse.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.