A
consultant who worked with the highly politicized Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB) claims the organization funneled a large portion of over $5
billion in collected penalties to "community organizers aligned with
Democrats" as part of a giant slush fund, the Post reports.
[The CFPB]
Funneled a large portion of the more than $5 billion in penalties collected
from defendants to community organizers aligned with Democrats — “a slush fund by another name,” said a consultant who
worked with CFPB on its Civil Penalty Fund and requested anonymity.
Created
six years ago as the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren and slipped into
the Dodd Frank bill before it was passed by Congressional Democrats, the CFPB
became one of the most powerful agencies in D.C., with the ability to exercise
enormous power over the U.S. economy while its budget remained unencumbered by
congressional oversight. As one
Hill writer put it:
The problem is that this agency
and its director were set up to be free from the control of the Congress. Congress’s
fundamental obligation to oversee and fund such bureaus or agencies is
short-circuited when it comes to the CFPB. In structuring it in the manner
written by now-Sen. Warren (D-Mass.), the law abrogated the idea of a
government by the people, for the people and of the people.
Instead, it
established an autocratic and unaccountable power center for people of Warren’s
ideological persuasion — those who view our market economy as an enemy that
must be managed by a chosen few. The creation of the CFPB as a
rogue agency with a dictatorial leader is one of the most significant acts of
malfeasance perpetrated on the American constitutional system since the
Sedition Acts of 1798.
The
reins of the CFPB were handed over to Trump appointee Mick Mulvaney last week
following the resignation of Director Richard Cordray, but not before Deputy
Director Leandra English's unsuccessful attempt to block Mulvaney's appointment
in a complaint filed against Trump and Mulvaley in a DC court.
After a
Federal judge ruled that Mulvaney is now acting director of the CFPB - his
first order of business was to institute a 30-day freeze on all new hiring and
regulations.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, has been a total
disaster as run by the previous Administrations pick. Financial Institutions
have been devastated and unable to properly serve the public. We will bring it
back to life!
— Donald J.
Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2017
Both
President Trump and Mick Mulvaney have had strong opinions about the CFPB in
the past, with Mulvaney saying “It is a completely
unaccountable agency, and I think that’s wrong,” and
adding “If the law allowed this place not to exist, I’d sit down with the
president to try to make the case that other agencies can do this job well if
not more effectively.” Mulvaney also called the agency "a sad, sick
joke."
Aside
from the $5 billion "slush fund" detailed in the Post, the CFPB has also engaged in
the following:
o Bounced
business owners and industry reps from secret meetings it’s held with Democrat
operatives, radical civil-rights activists, trial lawyers and other “community
advisers,” according to a report by the House Financial Services Committee.
o Retained
GMMB, the liberal advocacy group that created ads for the Obama and Hillary
Clinton presidential campaigns, for more than $40 million,
making the Democrat shop the sole recipient of CFPB’s advertising expenditure,
Rubin says.
o Met behind
closed doors to craft financial regulatory policy with notorious bank shakedown
groups who have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money
to gin up housing and lending discrimination complaints, which in turn are fed
back to CFPB, according to Investor’s Business Daily and Judicial Watch.
Moreover,
the CFPB secretly assembled several massive consumer databases which raise
privacy and corporate liability concerns. "One sweeps up personal credit
card information and another compiles data on as many as 230 million mortgage
applicants focusing on “race” and “ethnicity.”"
reports The Hill. Another database contains over 900,000 unvetted grievances
against financial companies, points out Alan Kaplinsky, lead regulatory
attorney for Ballard Spahr LLP.
Think a
database of google's depth, but used solely by the government.
In this
context, Mick Mulvaney appears to be the right tool for the President's vow to
"put the regulations industry out of business," which he says will
lead to higher employment and higher wages.
“If
you’re wondering about his commitment to deregulation, don’t,” Mulvaney said in
front of a libertarian gathering a few months ago, “because this is one of the
things he pounds on again and again and again.”