Peters Floor Remarks Opposing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Nominee Kathleen Kraninger

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) spoke on the Senate floor today in opposition of the nomination of Kathleen Kraninger to be the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Below is video of his remarks and text as prepared for delivery:

“Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the nomination of Kathleen Kraninger to be Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.

“This is one of the most important positions in our entire government, a job dedicated to protecting consumers from fraudsters, predatory lending and dangerous financial products that can drive families to bankruptcy. Ms. Kraninger does not have the experience, or the values, to hold such an important job. She has fully endorsed this Administration’s ongoing efforts to systematically dismantle protections for consumers.

“This time last year, I led over 40 of my colleagues in writing to the President urging him to nominate a professional, bipartisan expert with a proven record of being tough on financial institutions that rip off consumers.

“Instead, this Administration has spent the past year working to gut the CFPB under Interim Director Mulvaney. They have frozen data collection of consumer complaints and undermined enforcement tools. They have slow-walked enforcement actions and weakened protections for service members and seniors. They have stripped the Fair Lending Office of enforcement powers and closed the Office of Students and Young Consumers.

“Ms. Kraninger supports all of these actions, and all of these actions run contrary to the mission and purpose of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This nominee is not a bipartisan professional with a proven record of financial enforcement, she is a politically driven choice who will dismantle protections for our military and veterans, our students and seniors and all American consumers.

“Mr. President, I had the honor of serving on the Dodd-Frank Conference Committee, where we finalized the strongest Wall Street reform bill in generations and created the CFPB. I have spent the past decade defending the CFPB from one attack after another, efforts to cut off its funding, efforts to make it harder for them to hire qualified staff and efforts to make it harder for them to put in place important new protections for the American people.

“And Mr. President , it is unconscionable that this Administration will now spend the coming years attacking the CFPB from within by putting in place leadership that fundamentally does not believe in protecting consumers. We need to hold financial bad actors and special interests accountable, not let them set the CFPB’s agenda.

“My Democratic colleagues and I told the President this a year ago and I’ll say it again today, the nation needs a professional, bipartisan expert with a proven record of being tough on financial bad actors to run the CFPB. Ms. Kraninger does not meet this standard so I will oppose her nomination and urge my colleagues to join me.”

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