WASHINGTON—Mick Mulvaney has pledged to tone down the CFPB’s aggressive regulatory and enforcement stance.
Mulvaney, the acting head of the CFPB, said he will continue to ensure the Bureau enforces consumer protection laws, but he also said the agency will not assume that “the bad guys” are the financial services firms it supervises – a belief he attributed to the Democrats helped to create the CFPB and appoint its leadership, Mulvaney wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“The CFPB has a new mission: We will exercise, with humility and prudence, the almost unparalleled power Congress has bestowed on us,” Mulvaney wrote. “But we go no further. The days of aggressively ‘pushing the envelope’ are over.”
In the op-ed Mulvaney also stated the CFPB will do better at measuring the costs and benefits of its rules. He added that regulatory priorities should be driven by data, such as the consumer complaints that come in to the agency.
Since being named by President Donald Trump in November to temporarily head the CFPB, Mulvaney’s actions have signaled that the CFPB will back away from heavy regulation. As CUToday.info reported, in January Mulvaney announced that the payday lending rule would be re-written. He also declined to request budget money for the second quarter of 2018, saying the Bureau would instead spend down reserves.