http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/in-draining-the-cfpb-swamp-trump-finds-monsters/
Regulation: After Consumer Finance Protection Bureau chief Richard Cordray submitted his resignation, President Trump picked a suitable temporary director to replace him: Mick Mulvaney, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget. The swamp didn't like it.
It turns out that Cordray, quite illegally, on his way out named his deputy, Leandra English, as the temporary director. When Mulvaney arrived at work Monday morning, he was forced to issue a memo saying "Please disregard any instructions you receive from Ms. English in her presumed capacity as acting director."
He was being polite. This was nothing more than an attempt at a bureaucratic coup d'etat, or "resistance" in the popular phrase of the far left.
The fact is, Trump has every right by law to name a temporary acting director of a federal agency. And if you don't believe it, here's what Mary McLeod, the CFPB's very own general counsel, had to say about that: "Questions have been raised whether the president has the authority under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) to designate Mick Mulvaney ... as Acting Director of CFPB. ... This confirms my oral advice to the Senior Leadership Team that the answer is 'yes.' "
What has really turned this whole thing on its head is that English now has the gall to sue Trump for naming Mulvaney to the post. English claimed she, not Mulvaney, was the "rightful" occupant of the temporary director's slot. Why? Well, because, that's why!
If nothing else, this shows what a monumental, perhaps even Sisyphean, job it will be for Trump to drain Washington's fetid bureaucratic swamp. It's not the dirty water so much as the swamp monsters that make it such a perilous task.
Those who work in the CFPB, which was created by the Obama administration in 2010 as the right arm of the financially disastrous regulatory monstrosity known as Dodd-Frank, think of themselves as having a special mission: to regulate every nuance of the U.S. consumer financial world, supposedly to "protect" consumers.
It's important to know, as well, that the CFPB is the fevered brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She - along with her New England senatorial tag-team partner and socialist stalwart, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders - inhabits the farthest fringe of the Democratic Party. As with all so-called progressives, she believes that the American people are ignorant sheep that need to be herded by wise shepherd-kings (that is, bureaucrats like Leandra English) for their own good.
This is why Warren, English and other members of the inside-the-Beltway progressive "resistance" are even willing to break the law: For them, the ends always justify the means, the law be damned.
As we've said before, the CFPB is basically a rogue agency, with virtually no accountability to Congress or to the American people for that matter. It was designed that way. And no, this is not just a question of governance style; it's a question of constitutionality, of the rule of law.
In its current form, the CFPB is unconstitutional, as a federal court way back in October of 2016 already ruled. Yet it remains little changed, the kind of nightmarish bureaucracy that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would impose on us across the board if given the chance. It would be a serious erosion of what remains of our precious constitutional rights.
The mainstream media have largely treated this as a kind of he-said/she-said spat. It's not. It's quite serious. If Leandra English can declare herself head of a major U.S. agency, then the chances of truly reasserting control over the administrative state would shrink to near zero.
So what to do? Well, almost certainly Trump will be upheld in his right to name a temporary replacement for Cordray. So what if the remaining CFPB minions refuse to acknowledge the reality? As some have suggested, it's time to seriously clean house.
"The president should fire her immediately, and anyone who disobeys Director Mulvaney's order should also be fired summarily," said Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. "The Constitution and the law must prevail against the supposed resistance."
Here, here. It's time to roll back the power of the bureaucrats, and reclaim power for elected officials who actually answer to the voters. If that doesn't work, we'll repeat what we've suggested before: Shut the useless, money-wasting, economy-distorting CFPB down. It won't be missed.
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