Trump nominates budget official Kraninger to lead consumer bureau

President Trump on Monday formally nominated White House budget official Kathy Kraninger to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Kraninger, an associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), would take control of a controversial agency created by the Dodd-Frank Act to police the financial sector.

{mosads}The White House announced Kraninger’s nomination on Saturday, less than a week before a key deadline to name a permanent director for the CFPB.

Kraninger would replace OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, who has simultaneously served as the CFPB’s acting chief since November 2017.

At OMB, Kraninger oversees $250 billion in federal spending for seven Cabinet departments and 30 federal agencies, according to the White House, including the Treasury Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development. She also oversees the CFPB budget in her White House role, though the bureau is independently funded through the Federal Reserve system.

Kraninger is also a former Senate Appropriations Committee staffer and helped open the Department of Homeland Security before her congressional career.

If confirmed, Kraninger would wield extensive power to police the financial services industry and lead a polarizing agency that Trump and Republicans have sought to weaken.

The CFPB had aggressively regulated banks and lenders under former Director Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee who enraged Republicans and elated Democrats with his leadership of the bureau.

White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said Kraninger “will bring a fresh perspective and much-needed management experience to the [bureau], which has been plagued by excessive spending, dysfunctional operations and politicized agendas.”