Daily Times

WEST PALM BEACH: A battle between the White House and Democrats over warring appointments to head up the top U.S. regulator for consumer finance is likely headed for the courts, opening any interim actions by the agency to legal challenges, lawyers said on Saturday.

Richard Cordray, a Democrat, stepped down on Friday as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which was created after the financial crisis to protect consumers from abusive lending practices, and he named staffer Leandra English as acting director.

A few hours later, President Donald Trump named someone else to lead the agency: Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director and one of the CFPB’s fiercest critics.

The CFPB, the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and a liberal firebrand, has long been in the crosshairs of Republicans, who say it has had too much unchecked power.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that the CFPB – which has imposed steep penalties on banks, auto dealers, student lenders and credit card companies for predatory lending practices – had “devastated” financial institutions.

Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump may nominate a permanent CFPB chief, but they disagree over who may lead the agency in the interim, a dispute which could drag on for months until the Senate confirms a permanent Trump appointment.

The dispute is over which federal law prevails in naming an interim director.

Published in Daily Times, November 27^th 2017.