The Boss Who Wants To Kill His Agency

To liberals, Mick Mulvaney is a nightmare. To conservatives, he’s a savior.

- Devin Leonard And Elizabeth Dexheimer

One of the first things Mick Mulvaney did last year after President Trump asked him to be acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was to read the statute dictating the agency’s powers. Created by the landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the CFPB was designed to protect consumers from the abuses of the financial industry and is one of the Democratic Party’s proudest recent achievements.

Mulvaney was no fan of the agency, having repeatedly attacked its very premise during his three terms as a Tea Party Republican in Congress. But he’d apparently never taken the time to study the statute governing it: Title X of Dodd-Frank. When he finally did, he was astonished by what was missing, namely a federal agency known as the CFPB.

“In the first section, it will jump out at you,” he says, bolting from his chair during a recent interview in his glass-walled office at the CFPB headquarters. An impish, energetic 50-year-old with a round face, oval glasses, and a steely wit, Mulvaney gives the impression of a man who revels in being the embodiment of liberals’ worst nightmare. Grabbing a copy of Title X of Dodd-Frank that he keeps handy, he points out that the law actually called for the creation of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. “That’s it!” he cries. “This is what Title X says! You go, ‘Well, wait a second? Where’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?’ It’s not in the statute.”