WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and other Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday accused newly appointed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Kathy Kraninger of abandoning the agency’s consumer mission by moving to overturn restrictions on payday lenders.

“Director Kraninger wants us to believe that an endless cycle of debt is a benefit to hardworking families," Brown said of the the CFPB’s proposed abandonment of a regulation that would require payday lenders to determine upfront whether low-income borrowers could afford the terms of the small loans they were securing with income from their next paychecks.

The bureau last month suggested the rule should be scrapped because it would reduce consumer access to credit, and there’s insufficient evidence to justify it. It is taking public comments on the change for 90 days.

Federal change in payday lending restrictions won’t undermine Ohio law

Brown and other Democrats on the committee strongly defended the regulation to Kraninger on Tuesday.

Brown argued that that payday lenders like Ace Cash Express aim to ensnare customers in a cycle of debt by giving them high-interest loans they can’t repay and repeatedly refinancing them. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen echoed Brown’s criticisms, noting that payday lenders stand to pocket more than $7.3 billion more every year if the restriction is removed.

Kraninger - a Chagrin Falls native who was a college intern in Brown’s congressional office - told Brown she’d like to see “a broad panoply of products available to consumers, and they can make the best decision possible for themselves.” She said the rule is being challenged in court, and that her agency is reviewing all comments before it decides whether to rescind it.

Brown also criticized Kraninger for continuing to employ a man with “a history of writing racist statements on his blog.” The employee, Eric Blankenstein, is responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

As a University of Virginia law student in 2004, Blankenstein argued online that “hate-crime hoaxes are about three times as prevalent as actual hate crimes” and that not everyone who uses the “n-word” should be labeled a racist, according to The Washington Post. In 2016, he argued online that it wasn’t racist to question whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

“Replace President Obama’s Kenyan heritage with Swedish (and for fun change his name to Sven Laarson), but he holds the exact same positions, says the exact same things, etc. If Trump went around arguing that President Laarson was actually born in Malmo, you wouldn’t call that racist, would you?” he wrote, according to a The New York Times report. “Help me understand why questioning the place of President Obama’s birth is racist.”

The Post reported that Blankenstein apologized by email to colleagues for using “intentionally provocative language" in past blog posts.

“Poor judgment in my choice of words back then, or how I framed my arguments, does not make me racist or a sexist, and I have always rejected racism and sexism in the strongest terms possible,” Blankenstein said in the email.

Brown noted that black home buyers are denied mortgages twice as often as white home buyers, and said it’s inappropriate for someone with “those attitudes” to police the situation.

“When you took over I asked you to remove him," said Brown.

Kraninger replied that Blankenship’s statements were being investigated by the CFPB’s inspector general.

“Senator, I believe in due process and I certainly believe that the process should be followed in this case,” Kraninger said.

“This isn’t due process in terms a court of law,” said Brown, the committee’s top Democrat. “This is someone who has proudly uttered racist statement after racist statement after racist statement and you have chosen to keep him in a job to enforce laws on anti-discrimination.”