[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 162 (Monday, October 1, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6410-S6411]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week we learned from investigative 
reporting that a senior political appointee--a political appointee at 
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Eric Blankenstein, has 
written hateful, bigoted blog posts.
  This is a man handpicked for the job--and paid very well from tax 
dollars--by Mick Mulvaney, the head of the CFPB, the sort of part-time 
head of the CFPB. He is tasked with enforcing laws to protect 
consumers, laws protecting Americans from discrimination and lending.
  The Consumer Protection Bureau is supposed to be on the frontlines, 
fighting for families getting ripped off by shady payday lenders and 
big banks.
  The person with Blankenstein's job should be fighting and preventing 
the very real financial discrimination that everybody in this body 
knows happens all too often today in Ohio and Oklahoma and across this 
country.
  Instead, now, because of news reports, we know the person tasked with 
this job has written that most hate crimes ``are hoaxes.'' These blog 
posts are filled with disgusting, bigoted language that I will not 
repeat on the Senate floor because we have a better decorum than that 
and this language is so offensive.
  But this is the man Mick Mulvaney wants going after big banks that 
discriminate. How is it that the Director of Management and Budget 
failed to look into the background of such a senior, well-paid 
political appointee? Placing Blankenstein in charge of fair lending was 
a moral mistake, a managerial failure, and he should be fired 
immediately. It has been a week now since reporters found those hateful 
writings. The fact that he is still in the job is a disgrace. The 
President should act; the CFPB head should act.
  We have seen no contrition from Blankenstein--no contrition from him, 
no apology for the hateful posts, no acknowledgement that these are 
totally inappropriate and immoral views for someone whose job it is at 
the agency to root out discrimination.
  How can you expect to lead a staff dedicated to that mission after 
these revelations, after this attitude, after expressing these kinds of 
views? There should be no place in the Consumer Protection Bureau for 
people who don't believe discrimination is real or don't believe 
discrimination is a serious problem.
  Too many Americans are turned down for loans or charged higher rates 
based on the color of their skin. We know that. That is proven. That is 
documented.
  A report this year from the Center for Investigative Reporting 
analyzed tens of millions of mortgage records. They found that across 
the country, people of color are far more likely to be turned down for 
a loan, even when you take into account factors like their income and 
the size of the loan. Someone who is African American or Latino with 
the same income, the same size of loan, the same financial 
information--the person of color is more likely to be turned down than 
the person who looks like me.
  In the runup to the 2008 crisis, faulty mortgages were often 
targeted--we know this--to people of color. Even African-American and 
Hispanic borrowers with higher incomes than other borrowers found 
themselves in subprime products, and then they had to pay for it later. 
These practices of discrimination stripped--stripped--a generation's 
worth of equity from communities that had fought hard for equal access 
to home ownership.
  Borrowers with these higher cost loans were foreclosed on at almost 
triple the rate of borrowers with standard 30-year fixed rates--almost 
triple the rate.
  It is important, when you talk about statistics and you think about 
these foreclosures, to think about the family that is foreclosed on, to 
think about the conversations at the kitchen table, to think about the 
discussion with sons or daughters who are teenagers about what is going 
to happen to them in school, changes in the school that they are going 
to go to, the different neighborhood, the different sets of friends. 
All of these are about foreclosures. All of these are about evictions, 
and that is just in the housing market.
  We know discrimination is a serious problem in all sorts of lending 
markets. It is why we created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 
to look after bank customers, to root out discrimination.
  But under Mick Mulvaney, the agency has been doing the opposite. 
Rather than policing shady corporations trying to get away with ripping 
off and discriminating against consumers, Mulvaney gutted the office of 
the CFPB that was supposed to stop discrimination in lending. He 
disbanded the team that protected student loan borrowers. He canceled 
an investigation into the payday lending industry that preys on 
consumers and traps them in a downward spiral of debt. He exhorted a 
group of bank lobbyists saying: You have to lobby harder. You have to 
go to people; you have to give campaign money so that they will listen 
to you.
  He has hired a bunch of political cronies, people like Eric 
Blankenstein, and has given them enormous salaries to run the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau into the ground, and we now know 
specifically of one. The abuses look pretty common, but we know of 
one--again, Eric Blankenstein--who has a history of spewing disgusting, 
bigoted views. He is still collecting a $260,000 paycheck from 
taxpayers. That is unacceptable.

[[Page S6411]]

It is past time that Eric Blankenstein--I don't think I have ever gone 
to the floor and personally called out somebody and their salary and 
asked that they be fired, but when he has these kinds of positions and 
this kind of background and has spewed this kind of hatred, and we are 
paying him $260,000 of taxpayer money, that is morally outrageous.
  Mick Mulvaney, do your job. President Trump, do your job. He should 
not be employed there.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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