Win for taxpayers as Consumer Protection Bureau chief seeks $0 for agency

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President Trump’s frugal budget director, in his latest bow to taxpayers, is skipping the usual ask for millions of dollars to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau he is temporarily running.

The reason for Mick Mulvaney’s extraordinary move: The agency has enough money to pay its bills.

In a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen, who funds the special consumer board, Mulvaney simply said, “I have been assured that the funds currently in the bureau fund are sufficient for the bureau to carry out its statutory mandates for the next fiscal quarter while striving to be efficient, effective and accountable.”

Mulvaney, the acting director of the embattled agency created by President Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, normally would be asking for about $145 million each quarter to turn the lights on.

But in a deep dive review of the agency that aims to punish financial groups that take advantage of Americans, he discovered that it has $177.1 million on hand.

“This letter is to inform you,” he wrote to Yellen in the letter obtained by Secrets, “that for the second quarter of fiscal year 2018, the bureau is requesting $0.” The letter is posted below. – READ MORE

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Renovation costs for the brand new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters have skyrocketed, posting 25 percent in cost overruns — significantly above the original budget set by the General Services Administration, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.

Original cost estimates for the CFPB’s renovation were estimated at $55 million, but the bureau ran up the proposed cost to $216 million. The Federal Reserve Inspector General rejected the proposal in 2014, saying there was no “sound basis” for the figure.

As the CFPB renovation costs continued to escalate, renovation was taken out of the CFPB’s hands and transferred to the General Services Administration (GSA). GSA’s budget, however, was nearly twice the original $55 million, hitting $99 million.

That figure ballooned to more than $124 million, according to a June 30, 2017, GSA document obtained by TheDCNF under the Freedom of Information Act. The document was part of a release of “change orders” and “modifications” submitted by Grunley Construction, the Washington, D.C.-based general contractor selected by GSA to renovate the CFPB building.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told theDCNF about the “excesses” he saw within the new building on his first day as acting director of the CFPB.

“Some of the obvious questions I asked myself when walking into the renovated Bureau headquarters on my first day as Acting Director were: who initially authorized these renovations, were they absolutely necessary, and were adequate cost controls in place? As I begin to focus on the Bureau’s budget, I hope to discover the facts behind these excesses and help ensure abuses won’t happen again,” Mulvaney stated in an email to TheDCNF.  – READ MORE

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