The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney, intensified his efforts this week to curb an agency he has denounced as a regulator run amok. His latest tactic: starve it of cash.
The consumer bureau is funded directly by the Federal Reserve and sends the central bank a request each quarter for money for its operations. On Wednesday, Mr. Mulvaney sent a letter requesting $0 for the current quarter, which runs through March.
The bureau has been sitting on a $177.1 million reserve fund, Mr. Mulvaney said in his letter. He plans to use that to cover the bureau’s projected quarterly expenses of $145 million.
“I see no practical reason for such a large reserve,” Mr. Mulvaney wrote. “It is my intent to spend down the reserve until it is of a much smaller size.”
The move is largely symbolic — the bureau has enough of a cash cushion to continue its usual operations for the rest of the quarter. It follows other recent moves by Mr. Mulvaney to spotlight the Trump administration’s desire to shift the consumer bureau’s trajectory.
