The Senate moved one step closer Thursday to confirming Office of Management and Budget official Kathy Kraninger as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
A motion to limit debate on Kraninger's nomination passed along strictly party lines, 50-49, advancing the nominee to a final vote.
Kraninger, who would succeed OMB Director and acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, drew strong opposition from Democrats who raised concerns about her involvement in the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border, and response to three devastating hurricanes in 2017.
Critics also focused on her lack of experience with consumer protection issues, and claim she will resume Mulvaney's efforts to roll back the bureau's aggressive enforcement practices.
"It isn’t Ms. Kraninger’s management experience that got her a giant promotion, it’s her enthusiasm for Mick Mulvaney’s anti-consumerism agenda that earned her this reward from President Trump," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the CFPB's original architect, said on the Senate floor Thursday.
"And how do I know that? I asked Ms. Kraninger [at her nomination hearing] if she disagreed with one single action that Mr. Mulvaney took during the year he’s controlled the CFPB. And she said, 'I cannot identify any actions that the acting director Mulvaney has taken with which I disagree.’ Not a single one."
Yet Kraninger drew backing from Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee. In the floor debate, Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said Kraninger had received "widespread support" from banks, credit unions, Realtors and auto dealers. He also repeated calls for Congress to change the CFPB's single-director structure and move to a bipartisan commission.
“Given changes at the agency over the last year, and frustration felt on both sides of the aisle, now is an appropriate time to reconsider the fundamental structure of the bureau to increase its accountability and transparency,” Crapo said. “I continue to support a bipartisan commission instead of a single director.”
He said the CFPB’s leadership has been divisive since the agency opened its doors in July 2011.
The full Senate is expected to vote next week to confirm Kraninger, a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget who spent most of her career at the Department of Homeland Security.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the Banking Committee's ranking member, said Kraninger was not qualified to lead the bureau.
“She has no experience in banking or finance or consumer protection,” said Brown, who released a
