During hearings before the Congressional committees like House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, each member is given five minutes to ask questions. To get through all of the questions that Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] had for Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, she would have needed a lot more time.
While she spent her five minutes asking Mulvaney about scenarios in which the CFPB took enforcement actions against financial services companies that resulted in money being returned to consumers, scenarios that would not have taken place had Mulvaney gotten his wish of having the CFPB abolished, Warren then submitted a list of 100 questions to the agency, on a wide variety of topics.
Among the questions asked by Sen. Warren were:
- Will CFPB open new investigations under its Unfair, Deceptive, Abusive Acts and Practices enforcement authority? If so, what criteria will CFPB use to determine whether to open these investigations?
- How many new enforcement investigations have been initiated during your time at the CFPB?
- Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act establishes the CFPB to administer and interpret Dodd-Frank’s prohibition on unfair, deceptive and abusive acts or practices. The Act instructs the Bureau to supervise non-banks that are large participants of a market for consumer financial products or services, which includes federal student loan servicers and debt collectors. Will the CFPB continue to supervise federal student loan servicers and debt collectors?
You can see a list of all the questions by clicking here.