Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Madam President, 10 years ago, greedy financial institutes crashed our economy and crushed working families all across this country. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, millions lost their homes, and millions lost their life savings. That crisis was no accident, and it was no act of God. It was caused because Washington looked the other way while greedy Wall Street bankers scammed hard- working American families. It can happen again if we let it.

If we learned anything from the financial crisis that nearly drove our economy over a cliff, it is that American families desperately need a strong consumer watchdog. Before the crisis, financial institutions sold consumers predatory loans that were like grenades with their pins pulled out. When they exploded, they wiped out trillions of dollars of wealth and caused millions of people to lose their jobs, their savings, or their homes.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created to level the playing field for consumers and make sure that Washington never again looks the other way while millions of families get squeezed.

On June 18, 2018, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Kathleen Kraninger as Director of the CFPB. Ms. Kraninger is a political appointee at OMB who has spent more than a decade working on homeland security policy in the executive branch and on Capitol Hill. She has never--I repeat, never--worked on consumer protection issues either in public service or in the private sector. She has zero track record of standing up for consumers.

The White House championed Ms. Kraninger's experience as a manager when announcing her nomination. A White House official stated that Ms. Kraninger ``will bring . . . much-needed management experience [to the CFPB].'' A quick search on Google shows that is bogus.

Ms. Kraninger's tenure at OMB has been marred by systemic management failures. As an OMB official with primary responsibility over the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, Ms. Kraninger was one of the officials responsible for managing and implementing President Trump's zero-tolerance policy. The policy resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe in which thousands of children were ripped from the arms of their mamas and daddies and thrown into cages.

Ms. Kraninger bungled the response to the three catastrophic hurricanes of 2017. Under Ms. Kraninger's leadership, OMB's budget requests in the wake of Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey were too little, too late.

Ms. Kraninger oversaw a budget that, if enacted, would have exacerbated, rather than alleviated, the Nation's affordable housing crisis.

No, it isn't Ms. Kraninger's management experience that got her a giant promotion; it is her enthusiasm for Mick Mulvaney's anti-consumer agenda that earned her this reward from President Trump. How do I know that? I asked Ms. Kraninger if she disagreed with one single action that Mr. Mulvaney took during the year he controlled the CFPB. She said: ``I cannot identify any actions that Acting Director Mulvaney has taken with which I disagree.'' Not a single one. That means she agrees with Mick Mulvaney's decision to drop a lawsuit against payday lenders who were charging vulnerable buyers 900 percent interest. She agrees with Mick Mulvaney's decision to gut CFPB's office that fights lending discrimination, which was designed to make sure communities of color aren't targeted with the most abusive loans, as they were before the financial crisis. She agrees with Mick Mulvaney's decision to stop checks that ensure that banks don't charge our military sky-high interest rates. She agrees with Mick Mulvaney's decision to censor reports to Congress and give student loan companies a free pass when they rip off students. She agrees with Mick Mulvaney's decision to load up the CFPB with more than a dozen political appointees to muzzle the CFPB's professional staff and keep them from doing their job. It is hard to imagine a stronger indication that Ms. Kraninger intends to continue Mr. Mulvaney's harmful trajectory of weakening CFPB to benefit big financial institutions at the expense of consumers.

Ms. Kraninger has absolutely no experience in consumer finance whatsoever, but she has been nominated to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because she is passionately committed to keeping it from leveling the playing field for working families. No thanks.

We have a lot of hard decisions to make in this body, but this one is a no-brainer. Hard-working American families deserve a fighter as the Director of the CFPB. When the CFPB fights for consumers, students can manage their loans. When the CFPB fights for consumers, servicemembers can serve their country without worrying that their families will be crushed by debt. When the CFPB fights for consumers, seniors can retire with dignity. When the CFPB fights for consumers, 29 million families get checks for over $12 billion from financial institutions that cheated them--and that happened in just 6 years.

Working families need a CFPB Director who is a fighter with a proven track record of making the consumer marketplace safe and aggressively pursuing companies that cheat their customers. Kathleen Kraninger is not that person. Let's do our job. Let's reject this nominee.

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