What Is Mick Mulvaney Thinking?

Maybe Mick Mulvaney needs a vacation. After all, he’s got two full-time jobs – directing the Office of Management and Budget and dismantling … oops … I mean running the CFPB.

How else can you explain some of the crazy things he’s been harping on the past couple of weeks? Let’s take the most outrageous one first.

“We had a hierarchy in my office, in Congress,” Mulvaney told the American Bankers Association’s Washington summit. “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.”

Did he just say … yes, he did.

He said that in order to get his ear, you had to pay for it. Classic pay for play.

Now this obviously goes on all over Washington. Campaigns are expensive, and most people wouldn’t pony up $1,000 out of the goodness of their heart. They make the contributions and expect something in return.

It’s not that this doesn’t happen … it’s just that few people talk about it in such blunt terms.

Then, there’s the name of his agency. He says the CFPB doesn’t exist. “[The] CFPB doesn’t exist,” he told the bankers. “[The] CFPB has never existed. That entity does not exist. There is no such thing as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There is the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.”

The CFPB, or the BCFP, has gone so far as to ask the Associated Press, normally the arbiter of journalistic style, to change the reference to the agency in its stylebook.

Critics contend that placing consumer protection at the end of the name demonstrates that the agency is de-emphasizing consumer protection.

Really? I guess that’s as good of an explanation as anything else.

Still, it looks like much ado about nothing. Who refers to the Department of Justice? Everybody calls it the Justice Department. Who refers to the Department of Defense? It’s the Defense Department, or better yet, the Pentagon.

In short, “Come on, man!!”

We’re not done yet.

Mulvaney says that other parts of Dodd-Frank require agency heads to appear and testify. But the section on the bureau says he just has to appear. Mulvaney says based on his reading of the law, it simply means he has to show up. He doesn’t have to say a word. Just show up.

Who thinks these things up?

One explanation could be that since the agency has only taken one enforcement action since Mulvaney took over the [insert your preferred name here], folks have a lot of time on their hands.

And so, they come up with stuff like this.

Poor Timing for McWatters?

By the way, remember that Mulvaney is just keeping the director’s chair warm until President Trump nominates a permanent agency head.

And NCUA Chairman J. Mark McWatters continues to be mentioned as a leading candidate. When McWatters’ name first surfaced, the bank lobby went nuts – calling McWatters a cheerleader for the credit union industry.

That screaming has died down a bit. But recently, McWatters’ response to Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) questions about whether the credit union tax exemption is outdated has been released.

McWatters delivers a spirited defense of the credit union industry and the tax exemption.

The defense may remind the bankers just how much they don’t want McWatters to head the consumer bureau.

Another Blow to Civility

Civility in our nation’s capital continues to disappear.

The latest comes from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders – who I can only take in small doses or my blood pressure goes through the roof.

Sanders was appearing on “Fox and Friends” one morning a few weeks ago to discuss the nomination of Mike Pompeo to become Secretary of State.

Here’s what Sanders said:

“Look, at some point, Democrats have to decide whether they love this country more than they hate this president. And they have to decide that they want to put the safety and the security and the diplomacy of our country ahead of their own political games. And we’re very hopeful that they will.”

So, wait a minute. If you oppose the Pompeo nomination, you don’t love your country.

If you decide that Pompeo’s Islamophobic comments in the past are unacceptable; or if you think he purposely misled people about Russian meddling in the election and you decide to vote against his confirmation, then you don’t love your country?

Baloney. Once again, someone in authority is demonizing those who don’t agree with her position.

Is it any wonder that a traffic jam on the Capital Beltway isn’t the only gridlock facing Washingtonians?

Again, policymaking requires compromise. It requires deals to be cut.

How can you civilly talk with someone who just questioned your patriotism? How can you make the compromises needed to pass legislation when the person you’re dealing with is going to question your patriotism?

The simple answer is: You can’t.

And that may be one of the main reasons why Washington is so damn broken.

David Baumann is a correspondent-at-large for CU Times. He can be reached at dbaumann@cutimes.com.