Mulvaney's Money Comments Overshadow Possible Complaint Database Privatization

Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that he may make the agency’s complaint data base private, but it was his comments about only meeting with lobbyists who contributed to his campaign when he was a House member that has garnered the attention.

“We are going to maintain the Consumer Database,” he said, at the American Bankers Association’s Washington.  “It is mandated by law. I don’t see anything in here that I have to run a Yelp for financial services sponsored by the federal government. I don’t see anything in here that says that I have to make all of those public.”

Credit union trade groups applauded that news.

But when he looked back at his congressional career, he made even bigger news.

“We had a hierarchy in my office, in Congress.,” he said “If you were a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you were a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you. If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talk to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions.”

Mulvaney critics immediately seized on those comments, saying they amounted to “pay for play.”

Senate Banking ranking Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio called on Mulvaney to resign.

“Deciding who you will meet with based on campaign contributions is the kind of ‘pay to play’ that understandably makes Americans furious with Washington, DC,” Brown said. “Mr. Mulvaney should resign, and The White House should quickly nominate a permanent CFPB Director with bipartisan support and a moral compass. Banks and payday lenders already have armies of lobbyists on their sides – they don’t need one more.”

Allied Progress, a consumer group, also blasted Mulvaney.

“This startling confession raises serious ethical and legal questions. In the interest of transparency and accountability, we call on Mick Mulvaney to release his congressional schedule and a list of all meetings he has had in his capacity as the temporary leader of the CFPB,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress. “Only then can begin to understand the scope of this apparent pay-to-play arrangement.”

Allied Progress cited campaign contributions Mulvaney had received and linked them to policies he has pushed.

For instance, the group said that during his congressional career, Mulvaney accepted $30,000 from CUNA and Allied Progress linked those contributions to Mulvaney proposals that the group contends will help credit unions.

Mulvaney also has expressed a desire to roll back the CFPB’s payday lending rules.

The American Financial Services Association was the fourth-largest contributor to Mulvaney’s last campaign in 2016, giving $15,000 to his reelection effort.

The kerfuffle over his campaign contributions overshadowed the news that he might make the complaint database private.

“The CFPB’s complaint database has a number of flaws including data security and privacy concerns, and we support the CFPB’s efforts to take a step back and address these problems before continuing to share information publicly,” CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle said.

“Any effort to rein [the database] in would be something that our members would support,” said Alexander Monterrubio, NAFCU’s director of regulatory affairs.

He said credit unions have made the argument that they should not have been a part of the database.

“In an ideal world, credit unions wouldn’t have been part of it in the first place,” he added.