A Democrat's Case for Kathy Kraninger at CFPB

Since the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's founding in 2011 via the Dodd-Frank legislation, few government agencies have been beset by more mismanagement and overstepped authority than the CFPB. Reforming the agency and bringing it back to its original intentions should be an urgent priority, which is why I am wholeheartedly endorsing Kathy Kraninger to become the new director of the CFPB.

From my first campaign for public office in 1990 until my last vote in the U.S. Senate in 2013, I had represented my constituents to the best of my ability on a bipartisan basis. This goal is precisely why I voted for Dodd-Frank while serving my last term in the U.S. Senate. Following the financial crisis, the regulatory rules undergirding the financial system were hurting the community banks that my constituents in Nebraska used on a daily basis.

I’ll be the first to admit the legislation wasn’t perfect, but I viewed Dodd-Frank as a good start on reforming our nation’s financial regulatory system. I hoped that the act would be amended and modified as time went on, but instead, certain partisans and interest groups saw Dodd-Frank as a sacred text. This is especially true when it comes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that was created via Dodd-Frank.

While the intentions of the CFPB are laudatory, its past leadership has moved the agency away from protecting consumers to waging quixotic crusades and generating headlines rather than fulfilling its mission. Even worse, the agency has been in the news far more often than it needs to be due to mismanagement and financial blunders.

The American public deserves a CFPB director who can institute common-sense reforms to the agency that realign the focus toward actually protecting consumers. As the former Governor of Nebraska, I am acutely aware of the need for sound, solid fiscal management and being judicious with government tax dollars. Based on my own experiences, I believe Kathy Kraninger is an ideal choice to run the agency. Her budgetary skills alone will be a breath of fresh air, and her quality leadership will steer the agency away from a scandalous past rooted in financial mismanagement under past directors.

The importance of Kraninger's experience cannot be overstated. Every dollar that gets wasted by the CFPB is a dollar that cannot be spent protecting us. Budgetary mismanagement is so acute that the Obama Administration’s Government Accountability Office released an audit in 2014. It found the CFPB had “a material weakness in internal control over the reporting of accounts payable” that was “a result of serious control deficiencies.” The GAO also found that the CFPB had a “significant deficiency” in accounting for property and equipment at the agency. Needless to say, Kraninger’s past work at the Office of Management and Budget will be a massive upgrade.

In her confirmation hearing, Kraninger promised to ensure consumers had access to financial products that are “fair, transparent and competitive,” and promised to aggressively go after “bad actors who break the rules.” I have no doubt Kraninger will fulfill the promises she made and will reform the CFPB into an entity that fulfills its original intentions as an agency formed to protect the American consumer.