The Senate Banking Committee was set to vote Thursday on the confirmation of the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but announced suddenly that it would postpone its vote.
The committee planned its vote for the nomination of Kathy Kraninger as the next director of the CFPB, along with other nomination votes. However, Wednesday night, the Banking Committee announced the postponement of its vote. The new date for the vote is still to be determined.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, scheduled the vote despite the fact that Kraninger has yet to submit responses to questions for the record from Senate Democrats concerning her views on financial regulation and immigration.
At the nomination hearing, Crapo told senators to submit any remaining questions to the nominees, saying they would have until July 31, 2018, to respond to the questions.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Crapo’s decision to allow the vote to move forward, despite Kraninger’s irresponsiveness to senators’ questions, specifically those concerning the nominee’s role in constructing the controversial border policy that separated illegal immigrant children from their parents.
“Ms. Kraninger and the Trump administration have offered no credible legal or factual basis for withholding this information, yet you are accepting their position and pressing forward with a rushed vote on Ms. Kraninger's nomination,” Warren said. “I am deeply concerned by your willingness to accept their untenable position and by your refusal to work with your Committee members — as you have in the past — to resolve their good-faith concerns.”
But while the committee did postpone the vote, it was not due to Kraninger’s lack of response. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Wednesday his plan to end senate business Wednesday for a short recess. The senate will return on August 13, 2018.
Kraninger’s nomination hearing did not go smoothly. Due to Kraninger dodging questions and the senators asking loaded questions or giving little time to answer, very little actually got resolved in the hearing.
Many question Kraninger’s ability to pass the nomination process, and some even suspect that her nomination could simply be a ploy to keep CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney at the helm. If her nomination is denied in the Senate, President Donald Trump will have another 210 days to nominate a new replacement.
Other nomination votes that were pushed backed today included Kimberly Reed to be president of the Export-Import Bank, Elad Roisman to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Michael Bright to be president of Ginnie Mae, Rae Oliver to be inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Dino Falaschetti to be director of the office of financial research for the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
