It was a big day for hearings in the Senate on Thursday. The main show was Mike Pompeo’s appearance in support of his nomination to be Secretary of State before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But there also was an intriguing performance before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.

That's where Mick Mulvaney, the “interim” head of the embattled Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, appeared before a panel that included Senator Professor Warren, whose idea the CFPB was in the first place. It has become quite plain that Mulvaney, who once called the bureau a “sick, sad joke,” was put in place to defang the bureau’s watchdog functions, if not dismantle the bureau entirely.

The best way to watch congressional hearings, which often give a very clear view of the vast gulf between democratic theory and democratic practice, is to watch what is not being said, the subtext beneath all the stilted formality and the limited time for each legislator to question the witness.

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There is no question that Republican opposition to the CFPB is based on the bureau’s track record at clawing back the ill-gotten gains squeezed out of citizens by the various species of pirate in the country’s financial-services sector, many of whom are contributors to the legislators in question. After all, as Mulvaney told the committee, “Elections have consequences.” One of them apparently is that the people who blew up the world economy in 2008 and then stole everything that was left should be relieved of the consequences of their actions that were levied under the Dodd-Frank reforms—chief among them, the CFPB.

Of course, Mulvaney and his supporters on the committee can’t say that, so their argument is that the CFPB is illegitimate. Senator Tom Cotton, the bobble-throated slapdick from Arkansas, asked Mulvaney what it was like to head up an “unconstitutional agency,” something that even Mulvaney choked on—because, unlike other financial regulatory bodies, the CFPB is not subject to congressional “oversight” or budgetary supervision.

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This argument was clear in a byplay between SPW and Mulvaney:

Senator Warren: Alright, and in 2015, you also supported a standalone bill that would have killed off the CFPB. Is that right?

Mick Mulvaney: I think that's correct, I think I was a co-sponsor of that bill.

Senator Warren: Okay, so I want to take a look at what would have happened if you had gotten your wish and the CFPB had been abolished as early as 2012. So in 2015, the CFPB went after Citigroup for cheating its credit card customers. CFPB forced Citigroup to return $700 million to people that it cheated. Now, if you had gotten your way and the CFPB had been abolished in 2012, that $700 million would be in Citigroup's bank account right now instead of in the pockets of thousands of Americans, right?

Mick Mulvaney: Not necessarily, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency also has jurisdiction over those actions and could have brought the same action.

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Senator Warren: Oh, I see, they could have brought the same action. Those are the same agencies that didn't bring those actions before the crash of 2008, and that didn't bring this particular case. But you know, let's not kid ourselves. Let's not pretend like you hope some other agency would do that work Mr. Mulvaney. I have a list of 11 bills that you supported during your time in Congress that would have made it harder for states and other federal agencies to protect consumers and to hold cheaters accountable.

And, again:

Senator Warren: Thank you. So let's look at another example. In 2016, CFPB went after a for-profit college chain called Bridgepoint that scammed students with deceptive loans. The CFPB returned nearly $25 million to those students. If the CFPB hadn't existed, that $25 million would still be sitting at Bridgepoint instead of with working families.

Let me do one more. In 2017, the CFPB shut down a company called Top Notch Funding, which was scamming 9/11 first responders out of the taxpayer money they got to treat medical problems developed after 9/11.

Mr. Mulvaney, if the CFPB had been abolished like you wanted, Top Notch Funding might still be out there stealing from 9/11 first responders, right?

Mick Mulvaney: They might be or the FTC might have enforced the law against them.

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Senator Warren: Or some other agency might magically have intervened when they didn't.

Mick Mulvaney: Why would it have been more magic to have the FTC do it than the Bureau?

Senator Warren: They have a history of not doing this. Let's do one more example. In 2013, CFPB went after DFS and U.S. Bank and recovered $6.5 million for 50,000 active-duty members of the military who were targeted for scam car loans. Those 50,000 active-duty military would have been out of luck if the CFPB had been abolished in 2012, just like you wanted, right Mr. Mulvaney?

Mick Mulvaney: Again, the OCC has concurrent jurisdiction-

Senator Warren: Yeah, they have concurrent jurisdiction which they did not use.

This is the basic subtext of the whole thing. One of the biggest reasons for the 2008 calamity was that every federal regulatory body fell down on their jobs. One of the reasons that happened was that the members of Congress, which controlled the budgets of said agencies, were mostly sublets of the banking and financial-services industries that were profiting from planting landmines under the country’s economy. This, as has been pointed out in many places, included then-Congressman Mick Mulvaney, who, for example, received $60,000 in campaign money from the payday loan vampires whom Mulvaney’s CFPB is now seeking to let off the hook.

It is not, shall we say, seemly, for a member of Congress to point out that the reason the CFPB was designed to be as independent as it is was because in our corrupt and money-drunk politics, too many members of Congress are big ol’ ‘ho’s who can’t be trusted not to interfere with regulators whose actions might inconvenience the big money that holds the note on those particular political careers. So you yell about “oversight” and the Constitution, and you pretend that you haven’t worked to subvert both of them on behalf of the people for whom you really work, and you hope that none of the suckers out there can follow the subtext of what you’re trying to accomplish. That is another consequence of elections.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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