A recent comment about giving preferential treatment to donors is coming back to bite the agency's acting director
Mick Mulvaney’s recent comments about giving preferential treatment to political donors has come back to bite him.
Mulvaney recently said that when he was in Congress he gave preferential treatment to lobbyists who donated to his campaigns. Now Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is asking Mulvaney if he’s favoring the same lobbyists as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Mulvaney’s comments, which have drawn criticism from both sides of the aisle, came last week at an American Bankers Association conference. Mulvaney told the audience that as a South Carolina congressman, he’d refused to meet with many lobbyists who didn’t contribute money to his campaign.
“I’m going to put my old congressional had on for a second,” he said. “We had a hierarchy in our Office in Congress. If you are a lobbyist that never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you are a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
And now, Warren wrote in an April 26 letter, Mulvaney appears to be extending that philosophy to the running of the CFPB.
“Almost every one of your major decisions at the CFPB has fulfilled a request of a lobbying organization that has donated tens of thousands of dollars to your political campaigns,” Warren wrote. “The public deserves to know whether this is a coincidence or is a reflection of the same kind of ‘hierarchy’ you created when you ran your congressional office.”
Warren also wrote to the CFPB’s ethics official, according to a Bloomberg report. The Massachusetts Democrat asked the watchdog what was being done to ensure that Mulvaney’s work at the agency was appropriate, and what issues he and his staff have recused themselves from.
