Consumer financial protection agency Director Kathleen (“Kathy”) Kraninger will be among six witnesses for Thursday’s hearing before a House panel, which is conducting an oversight hearing on the agency.
Kraninger, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since being confirmed by the Senate in December, will testify before the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled “Putting Consumers First? A Semi-Annual Review of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” The hearing gets underway at 10 a.m.
Also testifying at the hearing, according the to the committee:
- Hilary Shelton, director & senior vice president for advocacy and policy, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
- Linda Jun, senior policy counsel, Americans for Financial Reform.
- Jennifer Davis, government relations deputy director, National Military Family Association.
- Seth Frotman, executive director, Student Borrower Protection Center.
- Scott Weltman, managing shareholder, Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., L.P.A.
Frotman is the former student loan ombudsman at the bureau who resigned last summer. In a resignation letter he said that, after 10 months of leadership at the bureau by former Acting Director John (“Mick”) Mulvaney, “it has become clear that consumers no longer have a strong, independent Consumer Bureau on their side.” Frotman cited, in the in the months leading up to his resignation “sweeping” changes implemented by the bureau under Mulvaney’s tenure.
Also a focus of the hearing, according to the committee: the “Consumer First Act,” authored by Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). The bill (which has not yet been introduced) is aimed at requiring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to “meet its statutory purpose, and for other purposes,” according to its subtitle.
Putting Consumers First? A Semi-Annual Review of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau