Mulvaney's Advice to Bankers: Up Campaign Donations to Diminish Consumer Watchdog

Source: NYT

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives and lobbyists on Tuesday that they should increase their campaign donations to influence lawmakers, revealing that he would meet only with lobbyists who contributed to his campaign when he served in the House.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lobbyists at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

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But he wants Congress to go further and has urged it to wrest funding of the independent watchdog from the Federal Reserve, a move that would give lawmakers — and those with access to them — more influence on the bureau’s actions. On Tuesday, he implored the financial services industry to help support the legislative changes he has requested to diminish the bureau’s power by increasing campaign donations.

Mr. Mulvaney said that trying to sway legislators that way was one of the “fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy. And you have to continue to do it.”

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/mulvaney-consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html

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I guess I missed the part of the Constitution where it explains that buying lawmakers with campaign donations is "one of the fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy."