Key Takeaways
- Jonathan McKernan, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the agency would continue to perform its legally mandated duties.
- The Trump administration has all but shut down the CFPB in recent days, closing its headquarters and telling its staff not to work.
- McKernan suggested the bureau would be “right-sized” in the future and “refocus” its mission.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told senators Thursday the agency would continue the mission given to it by Congress, despite Trump administration actions all but dismantling the agency.
Jonathan McKernan, Trump’s nominee for director of the CFPB, told members of the Senate’s banking committee that the agency would perform the functions it’s required by law to do, including enforcing laws against financial companies cheating their customers. The future of the agency is in doubt, as the White House has ordered its employees to stop work and closed its headquarters. Influential Trump advisor Elon Musk has called to “delete” the agency, and the White House requested a funding level of $0.
“I’m going to enforce the law,” McKernan said at the hearing. “That’s my commitment to you. That means performing each of the statutorily assigned responsibilities for the CFPB.”
McKernan faced grilling from incredulous Democratic senators including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who led the effort to establish the bureau in 2010 in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis.
“It kind of feels like you’ve been lined up to be the number one horse at the glue factory,” Warren said.
Even as the hearing proceeded, the bureau’s legal team reportedly dropped several cases it was pursuing against financial companies, including a $2 billion lawsuit against Capital One alleging the bank had cheated customers out of interest payments.
McKernan, a former board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, said the agency had overreached its authority in the past, echoing common Republican criticisms of the bureau, and suggested the future CFPB would be a smaller one.
“We’ve got to refocus it on its mission,” he said. “We need to right-size it, make sure that we have an efficient CFPB, and we need to reinstate some accountability to our elected officials.”
That approach would be a stark contrast to the bureau under former president Joe Biden, which spent its final days launching lawsuits against major financial companies and creating rules for financial companies, including a $5 cap on overdraft fees that is being challenged in court by banks.
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