Kathy Kraninger is the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, confirmed on a party-line vote in the U.S. Senate in December 2018. Kraninger previously worked for the Trump administration at the Office Of Management And Budget, and the George W. Bush administration at the Department of Homeland Security.
Since joining the Trump Administration, Kraninger has:
- Had budgetary oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and likely participated in discussions on the controversial immigration policy, meaning that her fingerprints are all over the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” family separation policy.
- Conducted zero new research before releasing an industry-friendly proposal to gut payday loan borrower protections – her first major action as CFPB Director.
- Neglected The CFPB’s duty to supervise lenders’ compliance with the Military Lending Act.
- Refused to fire an employee with a history of racist writings from the CFPB, and let him serve in a role overseeing fair lending for months after she joined the Bureau.
- Has defended an employee who formerly worked for a Southern Poverty Law Center-identified anti-LGBTQ hate group, and gave him the authority to give industry broad exemptions from consumer protection laws, including laws against discriminatory lending.
- Proposed a rule that would allow debt collectors to send unlimited, unsolicited texts and emails to consumers.
- Appointed a former mortgage banker who was called the “new face of the housing crisis” to serve on the bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board.
- Announced she would no longer defend the constitutionality of the CFPB’s single director structure—prompting companies to cite the same argument to challenge CFPB enforcement actions in court.
- Announced industry-friendly changes to the consumer complaint database that could shield bad actors through walls of disclosures and by casting consumer stories as unreliable.
- Told an audience of bankers: “You are really helping drive the agenda.”
- Hired a former student loan servicing executive to be CFPB’s private education loan ombudsman – the executive’s former agency was accused of “derailing hundreds of public-sector workers from receiving student loan forgiveness.”
- Voted to advance a Rent-a-Bank scheme that would allow payday lenders to use a loophole to violate state interest rate caps.