BUDGET/CONSUMER PROTECTION/FEDERAL RESERVE: “Every quarter, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau formally requests its operating funds from the Federal Reserve. Last quarter, former director Richard Cordray asked for $217.1 million. Cordray, an appointee of President Barack Obama, needed just $86.6 million the quarter before that. And yesterday, President Donald Trump’s acting CFPB director, Mick Mulvaney, sent his first request to the Fed.
He requested zero.
In a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen obtained by POLITICO, Mulvaney wrote that the bureau already has $177 million in the bank, enough to cover the $145 million the bureau has budgeted for its second quarter. Cordray had maintained a ‘reserve fund’ in case of overruns or emergencies, but Mulvaney said he didn’t see any reason for it, since the Fed has always given the bureau the money it needs. Mulvaney, who is also Trump’s budget director, noted that instead of advancing the funds to the bureau, the Fed could return them to the Treasury and reduce the deficit…
The Trump administration has not shown much interest lately in deficit reduction, but it has shown avid interest in reining in the independent CFPB. “
-Michael Grunwald, “Mulvaney requests no funding for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Politico, Jan. 18, 2018 09:00am