Economy

Report: Mulvaney Signed Off On Deleting Wage Theft Data

Written by SK Ashby

Mick Mulvaney is ostensibly the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but he's also the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and, in that capacity, he signed off on allowing employers to steal from their employees.

Last month we learned the Labor Department deliberately deleted data that showed employers could steel $640 million in tips from their employees each year if an Obama-era regulation was repealed.

Bloomberg Law reports that Mick Mulvaney personally intervened and overruled officials at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs who wanted to include the data in the report on the potential consequences of repealing the regulation.

Mulvaney sided with Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta over the government’s rulemaking clearinghouse—a little-known but critical wing of the White House called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—three current and former executive branch officials told Bloomberg Law. That allowed the department to delete from the proposal internal estimates showing businesses could take hundreds of millions in gratuities from their workers. [...]

Acosta and his team elevated the dispute to Mulvaney, who as Office of Management and Budget director oversees OIRA, after Trump-appointed OIRA Administrator Neomi Rao and her staff attempted to block the Labor Department from issuing the tip pool regulation. Rao wanted the department to reinsert estimates quantifying how much workers could lose out on tips to their bosses, who would be allowed to participate in the tip pool.

The Labor Department's inspector general is investigating the process the led to the deletion of the data, but I'm sure Mick Mulvaney is safe. Trump likes him. He's a toady who will say anything and compromise any position he previously held in service of Trump.