United States Brown Tender

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown D-OH ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking Housing and Urban Affairs delivered the following floor speech opposing Kathy Kraningers nomination for Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau CFPB. Sen. Brown warns that Kraninger will continue to be a rubber stamp for this Administrations anti-consumer agenda. Sen. Brown led Senate Democrats to unanimously oppose moving forward with nominating Kraninger to the CFPB.Sen. Browns remarks as prepared for delivery followMr.Mdme. PresidentOur job in this body in public service is to fight for the people we serve. If youre taking a government salary your job is to fight for the people who make this country work.Wall Street the big banks corporate special interests they all have armies of lobbyists at their beck and call.Our job is to fight for ordinary Americans.Thats why we created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the financial crisis.The Consumer Bureaus job is to crack down on Wall Street predators and shady lenders who prey on hardworking families.The people in this town may have collective amnesia they may have forgotten the financial crisis and the housing crisis. But families who lost their homes and their retirement savings and their college funds havent forgotten.The CFPB is supposed to look out for danger before it crashes down on hardworking families and robs them of their homes and their jobs and their pensions. And for its first six years on the job thats exactly what the hardworking public servants at the Consumer Bureau did.They returned almost 12 billion to more than 29 million Americans who had been scammed and ripped off.The Consumer Bureau follows in this countrys proud tradition of progressive achievements like worker safety laws overtime protections collective bargaining rights social security and Medicare.But over the last year Mick Mulvaney has turned an agency meant to stand on the side of the American people into yet another outlet for the financial industry to push its agenda. Mick Mulvaney has said to workers and servicemembers students and seniors youre on your own now. Dont expect any protection from us.Its not just an attack on consumer protections. Its an attack on the dignity of work.Americans work hard whether they punch a clock or swipe a badge make a salary or earn tips. Whether theyre raising children or caring for an aging parent. And many workers barely make enough to get by and they havent seen a raise in years.They work hard to earn a paycheck to buy a home to send their kids to school and to save for retirement.And every day they find themselves under attack from scam debt collectors and predatory payday lenders or they see their pensions being raided by hedge fund billionaires.When we let financial predators strip away Americans hard-earned dollars through fees and scams we undermine the dignity of work that makes this country great.How can we look Americans in the eye who are taking on that second or third shift or starting a small business if their government is going to stand by and let criminals take their hard-earned moneyIt all comes down to whose side youre on.We know that Mick Mulvaney has been on the side of Wall Street. So now we have to ask ourselves whose side is Kathleen Kraninger onWe tried to get answers from Ms. Kraninger.In her job at the Office of Management and Budget she oversaw the agencies that ripped children from their families. So we asked Ms. Kraninger to show us what her role was in that horrific policy and she refused to respond.We asked Ms. Kraninger whose side she was on after a devastating hurricane left millions of American citizens in Puerto Rico without power water hospitals or shelter. We asked her to show us who she was fighting for when the government failed to provide relief. She refused to respond.Then we asked Ms. Kraninger whose side she would be on if she were the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Would she be on Wall Streets and Mick Mulvaneys side or would she fight for workers and servicemembers and students and seniorsIts one of the few questions she did answer.She said Im quoting her I cannot identify any actions that Acting Director Mulvaney has taken with which I disagree.We know exactly whose side Ms. Kraninger is on. Shes with Mick Mulvaney shes with Wal l Street shes with the payday lenders shes with the special interests.She is not on the side of the millions Americans and her neighbors in Ohio who lost their homes and their jobs and their retirement savings to Wall Street greed.She is not on the side of people who work for a living she is on the side of big corporations collecting a tax break to send American jobs overseas.Ms. Kraninger has no experience in banking or finance or consumer protection. Her one and only qualification is that she will be a rubber stamp for special interests. That is unconscionable.I call on everyone in this body I call on the President lets find somebody who will take this job seriously who will fight for the people who make this country work.