CFPB, BCFP or CLEA?

Following the financial disaster of 2008, the Democratic-controlled Congress decided that consumers needed more protection.

And so, they created the CFPB.

Republicans hated the agency and accused its director, Richard Cordray, of a laundry list of misdeeds: Rudeness, discrimination, lying and all sorts of other bad behavior.

Democrats, on the other hand, loved the agency and thought Cordray was doing a masterful job. They loved the fact he was going after people they believed were evil. And they loved the fact that because he was insulated from the appropriations process and could only be fired for cause, the Republicans couldn’t touch him.

When Republicans took over the House, they went after the CFPB with guns blazing. They passed legislation that would have neutered the agency.

However, the agency and its director continued to be protected because the Senate never considered the measures to rein them in.

But then Cordray went home to run for governor of Ohio and the Trump Administration decided that the CFPB should go out of business.

And emerging from the ashes was the BCFP. Acting agency Director Mick Mulvaney said he was simply following the law when he referred to the consumer bureau as the BCFP, rearranging the words in the title from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

And Republicans applauded and said the new agency, under Mulvaney’s leadership, was doing a wonderful job of doing very little – which was exactly what they wanted.

Democrats, on the other hand, thought the BCFP was protecting the bad guys and doing nothing.

The punchline of this whole mess, of course, is that the CFPB and the BCFP are the same bureaucratic animal.

To make matters even more complicated, the Financial CHOICE Act, House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s (R-Texas) legislation to roll back Dodd-Frank, would have renamed the agency the Consumer Law Enforcement Agency, or the CLEA.

Meanwhile, the Financial Services Committee’s ranking Democrat, Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), has introduced legislation that would require any reference to the BCFP be deleted and CFPB inserted.

Don’t our lawmakers have something better to do? How about passing appropriations bills to keep the government funded? Or maybe reauthorizing the flood insurance program on a long-term basis?

But no, they’ve got to argue over acronyms.

Oy.

Speaking of Cordray

The former CFPB director is locked in a tight battle with Republican Mike DeWine for the right to replace Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

The race is considered by some to be a toss-up.

In such cases, interest groups might hedge their bets and contribute to both campaigns in an effort to guarantee that they have a friend in the statehouse.

But the folks who run the banking and credit union political action committees in the Buckeye State apparently have a long memory. Cordray made few friends in the financial institution community when he ran the CFPB.

And so, it appears those folks are stiffing him.

Crain’s Cleveland Business reported last week that the Ohio Credit Union league political action committee had contributed $15,700 to the DeWine campaign and nothing to Cordray. The Ohio Bankers League had contributed $15,500 to DeWine and nothing to Cordray. And the Ohio Mortgage Bankers had contributed $6,750 to DeWine and nothing to Cordray.

Tough crowd.

Is It Over Yet?

As a longtime political junkie, I usually love this time of year if the year happens to be even-numbered.

The campaigns are in full swing. Yard signs are all over the place. And you can’t turn on the TV without seeing some smiling candidate.

Not this year.

This year, the campaigns across the country have become so vicious and the candidates so crazed that they make even me flinch.

Let’s take a look at a few recent events.

In a video posted on Facebook, Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner told incumbent Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf to put on a catcher’s mask because “I’m going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes.”

In Virginia, Republican nominee Corey Stewart is running radio ads raising the possibility that Democratic incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine might have been involved in the confidential sexual harassment settlements signed by some members of Congress.

There is absolutely NO evidence that Kaine was one of those signing settlements, but Stewart has been running the ad.

In Minnesota, an official for the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party (that’s what they call the Dems up there) was quoted as saying Republicans should be brought “to the guillotines” after Election Day.

And those are just a few random examples. Both parties are guilty; both have dirt on their hands.

Now, political speech is protected by the First Amendment. And perhaps these candidates are simply following the example of our commander-in-chief, who applauds bad behavior on a regular basis.

For instance, on Oct. 18, President Trump actually praised Rep. Greg Gianforte, who once basically body slammed a journalist.

“Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of – he’s my guy,” Trump said at a rally in Montana.

Really? Your kind of guy?

And of course, politicians have been lying for as long as there have been politicians.

But Trump has made it into an art form.

How else would you explain things like Trump’s comment in August that U.S. Steel had announced that it was planning to build six new steel mills?

That apparently was news to U.S. Steel, which had not announced the construction of any new mills.

So maybe these candidates are simply looking at Trump as a role model.

I don’t have any solutions to this dirt crisis. Maybe at some point in the near future we can raise our expectations and hold our elected officials and candidates to a higher standard.

But don’t count on it.

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