Kraninger Vows to Make CFPB “Fair and Transparent”

Kathy Kraninger, President Trump’s nominee to become Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, promised to bring “common-sense solutions to complex problems” to the leadership position of the regulatory agency.

 

In written testimony delivered ahead of her confirmation hearing today before the Senate Banking Committee, Kranginer stressed her lifetime of public service, including a college internship with Sherrod Brown, a former Ohio representative and now the committee’s ranking member, as well as a two-year stint in the Peace Corps and work in the Legislative and Executive Branches of the federal government. She noted her current work as associate director at the Office of Management and Budget gave her oversight of “$250 billion in budgetary resources and related policies for seven Cabinet departments and 30 other Federal agencies, including the Bureau as well as the other financial regulators.”

 

In a nod to the vocal opposition to her nomination raised by Senate Democrats, Kraninger stated, “While I will not prejudge and cannot predict every decision that will come before me as director, if confirmed, I can assure you that I will focus solely on serving the American people.”

 

She expressed a commitment to a CFPB that is “fair and transparent, ensuring its actions empower consumers to make good choices and provide certainty for market participants,” and vowed to work with other federal regulators and state agencies on supervision and enforcement issues.

 

Kraninger further stressed the CFPB should be accountable to the public, particularly in regard to “its expenditure of resources”—an obvious reference to the charges of profligate spending on the agency’s headquarters and executive salaries by former director Richard Cordray—and stressed a more conservative approach to data collection to “what is needed and required under law and ensure that data is protected.”

 

Ahead of her appearance before the Senate, Kraninger was the subject of a harsh attack by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who issued a 14-page report titled “A Record of Failure” that detailed alleged inadequacies related to Kraninger’s work within the Trump Administration. In a Twitter posting, Warren sneered that Kraninger “has zero experience that qualifies her to run the @CFPB” and blamed her for being “responsible for the Trump Admin's child separation policy & botched recovery efforts in Puerto Rico.”

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