Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney told the agency's employees Tuesday that the agency no longer will "push the envelope" in policing private companies, suggesting in an agency-wide memo that he plans to reverse course from the one set out by departed director and Obama appointee Richard Cordray.
"Simply put, the days of aggressively 'pushing the envelope' of the law in the name of the 'mission' are over," Mulvaney wrote in the memo, which was posted online by a ProPublica reporter and the authenticity of which was confirmed by the bureau.
Mulvaney, who is also director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the philosophy set out by Cordray "frightens me a little bit."
"It is not appropriate for any government entity to 'push the envelope' when it comes into conflict with our citizens," he wrote, citing the potential for businesses to fail and employees to be laid off when the bureau sues a company.
The bureau will be reviewing all its activities to avoid doing so, Mulvaney wrote.
In particular, he called for focusing enforcement on instances of quantifiable harm to consumers.
Mulvaney's memo downplays the need for regulation of payday loans and prepaid cards, both of which generate relative few complaints to the agency. Mulvaney's bureau announced last week that it would revisit a major Cordray-era payday loan rule.
On the other hand, it hints at prioritizing action on debt collection, mentioning that almost a third of the complaints submitted to the bureau relate to debt collection. New rules regulating debt collection practices have been in the works at the bureau for more than a year.
