If you have concerns or issues you'd like to see former representative and current White House budget director and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) chief Mick Mulvaney address, that's fine, but you better pay up.
Mulvaney spoke at the American Bankers Association conference yesterday where he boasted that the only way to get his attention is to give him money.
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
Oh.
As you may know, Mulvaney received a significant amount of money from the payday lending industry before he joined the White House and became the CFPB director and, as the director, he has shut down the bureau's investigations of the payday lending industry.
Mulvaney's status as both Trump's budget director and the CFPB director puts him in a unique position to give banks what they want or, at the very least, turn a blind eye to everything they do. You may also recall a recent report that Mulvaney's office at the White House would be working with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to determine how it would apply vague sections of the GOP's tax cuts.
In his speech at the American Bankers Association, Mulvaney may as well have told them where to park the truck.
It's not a conspiracy theory if they openly confess in front of 1,300 people.