Lawmakers grilled Kathy Kraninger, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tuesday over the agency's decisions to overhaul the payday lending rule and to stop examining financial firms for compliance with the Military Lending Act, American Banker reported. In her first appearance before the Senate Banking Committee since being sworn in three months ago, the bureau head was also pressed about her failure to take action on student loan debt. At the hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the steep drop-off in enforcement actions since the GOP took control of the agency. Asked how many lawsuits the CFPB has filed against student lenders, Kraninger demurred, saying she didn't have "the specific answer to that question." “The public record seems to show zero,” Warren replied. “Not one single action.” In addition, several senators sharply criticized Kraninger over the CFPB’s decision to halt examinations of financial firms for compliance with the Military Lending Act. Kraninger has yet to resume the exams after taking over for Mulvaney, who halted them. The Obama administration had conducted supervisory exams for years, and long cited its authority not just under the Dodd-Frank Act, but also in regulating “unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices,” known as UDAAP. In January, Kraninger sided with Mulvaney and specifically asked Congress to give the CFPB "clear authority" to conduct supervisory exams for MLA compliance.
