The Affordable Care Act isn’t the only Obama relic facing extinction. Lawmakers are setting their sights on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency gone rogue under Director Richard Cordray.
For good reason. Since its formation in 2010, the CFPB has hidden behind the veil of objectivity to strengthen the Democratic establishment’s party infrastructure. Despite Cordray’s description of the CFPB as “an independent agency” — one “kept separate from partisan politics or big-money special interests” — Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild is now the most partisan agency in Washington, embracing liberal politics to extend its regulatory tentacles.
In January, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Cordray used a private device for government communications with CFPB employees, while failing to create appropriate records of messages with the agency — a clear violation of government policy.
A more recent FOIA investigation unearthed private communications between Cordray and Eileen Mancera, a longtime Clinton donor and Democratic lobbyist. An analysis of Cordray’s text messages shows the CFPB head communicating with then-CFPB staffer Rohit Chopra — a former senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress — to set up a conversation with Mancera.
Who is she? Eileen Mancera has “extensive experience as a political fundraiser,” having raised more than $1 billion for Democratic candidates, including more than $100,000 for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Doing his best Clinton impression, Cordray allegedly used a private device to conceal his messages with a well-connected Democratic loyalist.
That’s not all. In 2016, the CFPB sent $16 million to GMMB — a Democratic consulting firm — to publicize the agency’s marketing materials. Jim Margolis, a senior partner for GMMB, served as a senior adviser to President Obama and Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Contracting almost exclusively through Margolis’ firm, the CFPB’s advertising spending represents 2.5 percent of its annual budget — eclipsing the Food and Drug Administration’s 2 percent annual budget. (Almost all federal departments and comparable regulatory agencies spend less than 1 percent of their budgets on advertising.)
Why does a government agency need to spend millions of dollars on paid ads and political consultants?
How about collaboration with radical activist groups? When the CFPB drafted its infamous 2015 payday rule — which restricts low-income Americans’ access to payday loans — the agency worked diligently with the Center for Responsible Lending, a left-wing advocacy group notorious for attacking Republicans and the business community. CRL’s team reportedly “spent hours consulting with senior Obama administration officials, giving input on how to implement the rule that would restrict the vast majority of short-term loans.” The group — funded by the liberal Sandler Foundation and staffed by former Democratic operatives — “regularly sent over policy papers, traded emails and met multiple times with top officials responsible for drafting the rule.”
Given the CFPB’s pro-Democrat staffing practices, its activist ties come with the territory. In the words of Ronald Rubin, a former CFPB attorney: “As screening techniques improved, Republicans were more easily identified and rejected. Political discrimination was not necessarily illegal, but attempts to hide it invited prohibited race, gender, religion, and age discrimination.” (It didn’t take long for discrimination based on sexual orientation to join the list.)
The numbers bear it out. According to a review of Federal Election Commission data on 15 U.S. agencies and departments, 100 percent of campaign contributions made by the agency’s employees went to Democratic candidates last year. It leaves the CFPB tied for the country’s most politically biased federal entity — alongside the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Transportation Safety Board and Peace Corps. Even the Obama administration’s Justice Department was more diverse in its workforce’s political preferences.
As Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, recently put it, “It’s time to fire Richard Cordray.” And, given Deputy Director David Silberman’s union ties, Congress should replace him with an outsider focused on bipartisan solutions, not partisan politics.
The role of government is to help the American people — across the political divide.
