At least four deputies hired to help run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are being paid more than Congress Members or cabinet secretaries all while Acting Director Mick Mulvaney cuts the bureau’s budget and proposes changes to its funding structure, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Of the eight deputies Mulvaney has hired, at least three are being paid $259,500 annually and one is making $239,595, according to records requests. Most of the government operates under a universal pay scale, which is capped at $134,776 before adjusting for the higher costs of living in areas like New York City or Washington, D.C., according to the Office of Personnel Management.
However, there are exemptions to this pay scale at certain agencies including the Federal Reserve, which is where the CFPB receives funding. The top pay bracket for a Federal Reserve employee is $250,000, according to the AP.
Earlier this week Mulvaney proposed moving the Bureau’s pay structure out of the Federal Reserve to Congressional appropriations.
“As has been evident since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act, the bureau is far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities,” Mulvaney wrote in the report. “By structuring the bureau the way it has, Congress established an agency primed to ignore due process and abandon the rule of law in favor of bureaucratic fiat and administrative absolutism.”
Earlier this year, Mulvaney requested $0 from the Federal Reserve in the Bureau’s quarterly budget request because the reserves were “sufficient” to carry out its mandate.
“While [these savings] may not make much of a dent in the deficit, the men and women at the bureau are proud to do their part to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” he wrote.
Mulvaney will speak before Congress next week to advocate for his changes to the structure of the CFPB. He’ll be up against a wing of the Democratic party that is organizing to block any changes, as well as a bipartisan group of Senators pushing for a bipartisan commission to replace the single-director structure.
