text: Mick Mulvaney, appointed acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November, has promised to shrink the bureaus mandate and take a much softer approach to enforcement. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
  By The Editorial Board | opinion@scng.com |
  PUBLISHED: April 28, 2018 at 2:39 p.m. | UPDATED: April 28, 2018 at 5:45 p.m.
  Wells Fargo was just fined a total of $1 billion by the federal government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
  The fines are not related to the fake-account scandal for which the bank was fined over $100 million in 2016. This time Wells Fargo was penalized for requiring auto-loan borrowers to pay for insurance they didn’t need, and for charging mortgage borrowers fees to extend interest-rate locks even when the need for the extension was Wells Fargo’s fault. It’s the biggest fine ever imposed by the CFPB, an agency created in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Act as a response to the financial crisis.
  This is an agency with a target on its back. Republicans have long criticized the CFPB as an example of unnecessary and burdensome regulation, and the banking industry complains the bureau is too aggressive and overreaching in exercising its powers, resulting in damage to financial firms.
  Related Articles
  Opinion |
  California turned a constitutional shield into a government sword
  Opinion |
  GOP feigns shock at Trump’s creepy dinner guests
  Opinion |
  Constitution reading on House floor is a decent idea
  Opinion |
  We disagree with doctors’ lobby, care from nurse practitioners should be expanded
  Opinion |
  Expanding the child tax credit is a terrible bipartisan idea
  But opponents of the CFPB were not helped by some recent statements made by the agency’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney, also the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
  Speaking to the American Bankers Association conference, Mulvaney said that when he served in Congress, the only lobbyists he met with were ones who had made contributions to his campaigns.
  Mulvaney suggested the bankers make donations to lawmakers and urge them to support legislation to weaken the powers of the CFPB.
  No doubt Mulvaney could pass a lie detector test with those statements describing how Washington works. But the CFPB is an independent agency that is supposed to be walled off from politics. Now Mulvaney is under scrutiny for actions he’s taken at the CFPB, such as loosening regulation of the payday lending industry. As a congressman representing South Carolina, Mulvaney received $63,000 in contributions from payday lenders.
  Politics is one thing, but Americans need to have confidence that the people who make and enforce regulations are not selling their decisions to the highest bidder. Mulvaney should be transparent with the public about the reasons for decisions he’s made at the helm of the CFPB. And if he can’t do that, President Trump should find another acting director for the agency.
  Newsroom Guidelines
  News Tips
  Contact Us
  Report an Error
  Tags:
  Editorials
  The Editorial Board
  The editorial board and opinion section staff are independent of the news-gathering side of our organization. Through our staff-written editorials, we take positions on important issues affecting our readership, from pension reform to protecting our region’s unique natural resources to transportation. The editorials are unsigned because, while written by one or more members of our staff, they represent the point of view of our news organization’s management. In order to take informed positions, we meet frequently with government, community and business leaders on important issues affecting our cities, region and state. During elections, we meet with candidates for office and the proponents and opponents of ballot initiatives and then make recommendations to voters.
  opinion@scng.com
  Join the Conversation
  We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.