Barney Frank: English Should Lead CFPB Posted by Association of Vermont Credit Unions on 12:59 PM

Barney Frank

In a Washington Hill article, former U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who co-authored the 2010 law that established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said Monday that Deputy Director Leandra English should "clearly" run the agency amid controversy over the appointment of Mick Mulvaney.

“When we wrote the law creating the CFPB, and we deliberately tried to give it some protection from the normal political process,” Frank said on CNN's "New Day."

English, who was tapped by former Director Richard Cordray to be the acting director, filed a complaint Sunday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against President Trump and Mulvaney, after the president nominated Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget director, to lead the CFPB.

Passed in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act established the CFPB and called on the bureau’s deputy director to serve as acting director between Senate-confirmed chiefs. Cordray promoted English, his chief of staff, to the deputy director position shortly before resigning from the bureau on Friday.

Frank says that “we knew that fighting the large financial interests on behalf of consumers was going to put you in the battlefield everyday, so we did do deliberately special protections.  We gave the director of this agency a five-year term, removable by the president only for cause.”

Democrats have staunchly opposed Mulvaney’s nomination, saying he would gut the bureau and undermine its purpose.

Read the Hill article in entirety.