Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 11182017 20171119

Night on q a on cspan. Marr,ning us now is chuck the director of federal tax policy. He is here to talk about how the federal government spends the taxes that citizens pay. Thank you for joining us. Whoad a caller last week really wanted us to look more about how tax revenue is spent. Thats why we have you here today. How easy is it to follow the money of taxpayer funds . Easy, there are major categories of spending. Budget, theout the first is the defense budget, which is roughly about a fifth of expenditures go towards the military to pay for the defense of the country. And then roughly another fifth would go to Social Security. A very Successful Program that manages peoples retirement, retirement programs, Disability Program spread than you get another chunk, which iS Health Care. Medicare,ose one is and medicaid which we have seen in the news very much this year S Health Care for lower income people and also helps nursing home care for older people. Now we see it as part of the health care is the Affordable Care act, which is implicated in this tax bill. Chartse are showing the from the center of budget and policy priority that talks specifically about where those taxpayers dollars go. Social security, medicare, medicaid, chip, National Security assistance makes the bulk of that. Chuck Everything Else is in that slice. The roads, the bridges, education, scientific research, the fbi, all of those programs that we think of as the government is a smaller slice at the end. Host has it always been this kind of dumb . Has it all this kind of a breakdown. Has it always been dispensed anding defense spending these other programs . Chuck it has evolved over time. The government was tiny in the beginning of the 20th century, defense expenditures rose. Then you start to get the increase, the government starts to do more. The new deals bring us Social Security, the Great Society brings on medicare and medicaid, all along you have the infrastructure. The highway system is built in the 50s, it evolves in growth. Each generation tries to improve what the government does. Was toow, the big focus increase, expand access to health coverage. Thats why we got the Affordable Care act, so you saw investment in health care. That was a more important slice of what the government was doing. Ask, can question i you explain for viewers what is the center on budget and policy priority . Chuck its a think tank that focuses on the budget. Its through the interest, especially the interest of low and moderate income people. Host we have chuck mart explaining where your taxpayers funds go once it gets in washington. We talked about where taxpayer dollars go, lets talk about where they come from, what are the primary sources of the federal government. According to information from the center on budget and policy priorities, almost half comes from income tax by american taxpayers. 44 comes from payroll tax. Smaller amounts, 9 from the Corporate Income tax. All the rest makes of the other 9 . Chuck the largest source of individual income taxes, the payroll taxes are around one third of the taxes. For working in middleclass people, thats the most important tax they pay. You see the corporations pay a very small share, 10 , which makes this bill into context. The tax bill is about a major cut in the Corporate Tax rate, it does not touch payroll taxes. It really is focused on that small slice, which is the corporations. Host there are a lot of questions coming in for you. We are going to get rick to that. Write to that. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to ask, i have asked this and no one has been able to provide me with a straight answer. When the president travels to his resort in maralago, and he also has invited, when the chinese premier was in the u. S. , the japanese Prime Minister was in the u. S. , he took the entire delegation to maralago. Washington,me to you see the japanese premier staying at the japanese ambassadors house, delegation staying at hotels around d. C. When they go to the president s resorts, who pays for these expenses . Do the u. S. Taxpayers cover the expenses of the foreign delegations there are at the president s resort . Does the white house have a checkbook, or does it come from the u. S. Department of treasury that they reimburse donald trump resorts . Expecti think you would the Foreign Countries would pay for their accommodations. I think the u. S. Government would pay for the u. S. Officials there. I think where the controversy comes with this president is that he owns these properties and theres this question of whether he is profiting from this expenditure. Its obvious the very controversial. Host mary is calling from philadelphia on our democratic line. Wanted i agree with your guest that we are taxing and taking in less revenue as a loopholes that our politicians have instituted. Im a retired state worker, i started with the nixon administration, i retired under president obamas administration. Trickled down economics do not work, i witnessed this with president reagan. From 997 billion to 2. 85 trillion under the reagan administration. It was because we were not collecting revenue. Had 5 million undocumented people in the country, that means we had 5 million employers that have failed to pay taxes into the system. Now we have more, we have more than 11 million, maybe possibly more than that if you Institute People that have overstayed their visa. Until we get immigration and peoplegulated are paying into this system, we are going to continue to lose as taxpayers in this country. Chuck you make some great points. In the beginning of your question, its important. You have that Historical Perspective that i think we need now. During the reagan administration, and the bush administration, there was this idea of trickledown economics. We have tax cuts, and it flows down and health average people somehow. Obviously that did not work. We are seeing that again here. The risk is even greater, because if you think about it, the country is getting older. Retiring, there oldest baby boomers is 70 years old. Maybe you are in that group, that is going to build budget pressures over time. Our debt is going to get higher and higher. The republicans have this bill and they are going to add 1. 5 trillion to the debt and give most tax cuts to corporations in hope that it trickles down. That is a very risky proposition, we really should look back and see that that has felt before and take a lesson from it. Host we were talking about where the tax money comes from, one area was payroll taxes that you talked about. You get a little more detail. Nto that, or into the cpp it says the federal government levies payroll taxes on wages, income, and uses most of the revenue to fund Social Security, medicare, and other social insurance benefits. If they will taxes have become increasingly important part of the federal budget overtime. We have fica taxes . Chuck when it you renew your paycheck, you see the fica line. That is basically the payroll taxes for Social Security, which the employees pay 6. 2 of their paycheck. The employers match that. Thing, acare, same 1. 45 for the employee and 1. 45 for the employer. Thats what comes out of your paycheck. For workingclass people, that is the major tax that they pay. When you look at the difference between your gross pay and your net pay, thats the main thing. Host talk about these federal unemployment tax. Chuck that is paid through the employer, they pay that up to a certain cap for each employee. The idea is that employers will pay for their employees, they have this big insurance pool that everybody pays into. When the economy goes south, certain people lose their jobs, theres this trust fund of money that people can get some compensation for the work they have done to tide them over until they get another job. Host lisa is on the democratic line. Caller i have a twopart question to clarify. In the Affordable Care act, embedded in all premiums whether you are an individual or being paid through an employer, there is a tax that has been paid. Account forposed to some of the subsidy payments that would be paid which have now been stopped. Where is the Affordable Care act tax we are paying that is embedded in our premiums going . When it comes to medicare, we are all paying in our working lifetime. When we go on to medicare, everybody pays a premium. As far as 2007, higher income people pay higher premiums to the u. S. Government, either directly, or out of their Social Security check when they begin taking it. Medicare,re paid for , ore can we get an account a breakdown of how these aca taxes that we are paying, including premiums to medicare into the budget . With the percentages and the breakdowns they are talking about, we have a deficit of where we need to increase these payments. Medicare stays solvent and the Affordable Care act becomes stabilized in the market. Medicare through your parent taxes that you do when you pay when you are working. When you are retiring, theres a system of premiums that are adjusted for income. Most topical part of your question really gets at the Affordable Care act. I think this just needs to be understood, because this just happened. The senate has this tax bill going through, and now its a Health Care Bill all of a sudden. They changed it and it became a Health Care Bill, it is a direct attack on the Affordable Care act. The Affordable Care act had many pieces, expansion of medicaid, subsidies to help people afford to buy Health Insurance. There is also a mandate that forced people to buy Health Insurance, they get healthy young people into the market. What we see is the republicans have added an incentive to the tax bill, delimiting that mandate eliminating that mandate. That is a very risky proposition and could do great harm to the Affordable Care act. We are going to see what would happen is that those people who decide not to take Health Insurance are going to have less access to their doctors. Checking in on their prediabetes and chronic abilities, they are going to not have that contact with the doctor. Whenost important thing is you pull these Healthy People out of the market, those markets will become destabilized. Picture people who are in there, Small Business people who are in that individual market to ask hiS Health Care, their premiums will rise dramatically because the healthye with people pulling themselves out of the market. We have numbers that estimate as a result of what the republicans are doing, the number of uninsured will rise by 30 million people. Hopefully that word will get out there, the tax bill has become very much a health bill and puts a risk to the Affordable Care act. Host we are talking with chuck federale director of tax policy at the center on budget and policy priorities. Also formally an Economic Policy adviser to senator majority leader tom daschle and former staff at banking committee. We are explaining where taxpayer money comes from, and where it goes. A 274 88000. A 274ependence to 88002. The front page of the Washington Post is local officials worrying about what one aspect of this proposed bill, the elimination of the deductions stay and local tax reduction could mean. Small towns and thriving cities in republican and democratic leaning states. Local leaders are warning the 1. 5 trillion tax legislation undermines the ability to raise money for government services, including police and schools. The republican measures would eliminate or surreally curtail taxpayer abilities to lower the tax bill. Without that offset local leader state taxpayers will begin to see relief closer to home, making it difficult to survive basic services. Chuck this is a major risk of the tax bill is moving through. They try to get rid of the state and local tax reduction for people at the local members levels wont will be able to deduct their taxes. So muchike to make it harder for state and local governments to raise money. State and local government are the ones that pay for education. Your neighborhood schools. Your police, local infrastructure. All that will be harder to do because you are taking away this federal tax benefit. Theres great risk, theres concern across the country, republican and democratic areas that will be much harder for local governments to raise funds. Host what is the next step . The nexus between federal and local tax . Chuck the state and local governments will use property tax revenue and they will use it to pay for their schools. Community get to write off on their federal taxes those property taxes. For their income taxes, which goes to pay for fire, for police, for infrastructure. Now they will take that away at the federal level. You wont be able to deduct your state income tax. What that means is in those local areas, people will start to push back and not want to pay those taxes. You take away that federal benefit. You are going to stress those local and state governments. They will have a harder time raising money, and that will put at risk those school funding, infrastructure products projects, police, and firebird host emily is causing in. Emily is calling in. You are on with chuck marr. Teacher, i a retired pay my 40 quarters interest into Social Security. The government offset my retirement and i was not able to collect on my Social Security. When you say that Social Security is a retirement system, i think you are giving the wrong picture. Social security is a tax, that tax can be manipulated by the federal government. Fourby saying its years, i thought it was my retirement system. I worked very hard to pay in those 40 quarters. I would like you to Say Something about that. Yearseacher, i retired 17 at 700 a month. I needed the Social Security. I went into a Small Business, and the Small Business tax is unbelievable. Host i want to give chuck a chance to answer. Chuck im not sure where she lived, there are some carved out Social Security for state and local workers. Social security is a universal program that people pay into, and they get in retirement. Its the most important. Its the reason why poverty in the United States is among the lowest of any age group for older people because Social Security is so successful. Caller good morning. Question, a couple of questions. Have 20 million illegal aliens in america. Kids,f them maybe have they are in difficult situations, they probably get some benefits from the government. Nobody knows who they are because they are under the picture. What happens if you give them Social Security numbers, not citizens, and then put them on a 5,000 then charge them for each illegal. Multiply that by 20 million illegal aliens, in my opinion, thats a lot of money that can go down to pay the tax and become out of the shadows. Picture this, let me know if this picture that im going to go to you is exactly how it looks. Stadium, the top is filled with money. You have a bunch of rich folks laying on top of. The money. Here comes donald trump on top of the money. Here comes donald trump, paul ryan, and other republicans shoving money on top of what they already have. Immigrants, theres no question that theres this issue of immigration. Upy immigrants actually end paying taxes to the government. Its hard for them to get benefits. I think theres more taxes paid i these folks than one would think. Host what are the taxes that are paid by undocumented immigrants . Get a taxy can Identification Number that will pay the taxes. If they get a job, the money will be taken out of your paycheck. They do end up paying a bit of taxes. An issue, we obviously have an immigration issue that needs to be addressed, we have a large share of undocumented workers. There have been plans brought to work figure out how to work those people towards citizenship. A lot of that implies these penalties that they would pay as they work in that direction. Right now, that is stalled. I think it does get at an important point of this tax bill. It is heavily weighted, half of the benefits go to people in the top 1 . It really inherited wealth. There are major benefits here for people who inherit a lot of money. It is tilted in the direction of very wealthy people. I think that is a big concern about the bill going forward. It is tilted in favor of wealthy people, and poses this threat to the health care system. Host can you talk about the balance between the governments spending and its revenues . I think people understand when they have their income, they have to balance what they spend versus what they get. How out of wack is it when it comes to Government Spending . Chuck there are two concepts, the government takes in money and spends money. The difference is called the deficit, thats the budget deficit each year. The accumulation of all the defenses is all the deficits is the debt. You try to look at what is the share of the economy, and the debt as a shirt to the economy . The economy is basically the countrys income. Right now, the issue would be that the debt as a share of the economy is about 77 . Its somewhat elevated, and you have these future pressures. As a baby boomer retires, the debt is going to rise. You look outising, 10 years, its expected to go from 77 to about 90 . The major risk of this bill is it will push it even higher. Riskis taking on a fiscal for what benefit . One would argue this tax bill is so heavily tilted towards corporations, that average people are not going to get much benefit. They are going to have to pick up the tab. Its going to get to a level work when the bill is done, you will see now we have to come back and cut medicare, medicaid, education. Theres a real risk that workingclass people, middleclass people, can suffer. I want to ask quickly, what about the republican republicans say that will be the growth created by the tax cuts. They its like magic, will text cut taxes and it will raise money. That is something they have said before, they are getting more bold. They used to say it would pay for part of it, now we have the secretary treasury saying the tax cut will raise money. Thats a fantasy, that will not happen. You cut taxes, it costs money. The risk here is that this bill is 1. 5 trillion, thats a lot of money. They are going to bar all of that, the folks are going to have to pay for it. The pressure will come. Medicaid, education, science research, thats what the threat is. Host you are on with chuck marr. Ask whyid like to american taxpayers are paying for the bad behavior of people in d. C. . I understand they make payments out for harassment, coming out of taxpayers money. Can you explain that to me . Thatsharassment, regularly in the news. You see these offer reports of terrible behavior a very prominent men. It just came out this week that there has been a lot of payments made in the congress for harassment cases against four employees. Against its employees. That will be an area where you will probably see more attention in the coming weeks. Wheret money going, the money goes, where did it come from, who is involved. There are so many headlines about prominent people. Theres a lot of interest about who is behaving in what way. Look in the news, i think that will be a topic. Host those payments, its a fund by the treasury department. Chuck its coming out of the congressional budget, no question. Right now is anonymous. I think you will see some investigations. Host john is calling. You only have a couple of seconds. Is or the concern deficit, which you brought up. Point, you are talking about it increasing by the tax reform. The fact of the matter is, it continues to go up no matter what you guys in washington try to do. At some point, this issue has to be addressed. We cannot continue the regular work. At some point you will increase taxes to pay for all of this. It seems Like Washington has no desire to address this issue ever. It just continues to grow. Chuck i think right now, the debt is elevated, but manageable. The problem i have is it is taking on a debt risk for very little benefit. Borrow 1. 5when you trillion, ultimately somebody has to pay for that. You give tax cuts to very wealthy people and later on expect that you are going to have to raise taxes, thats a bad deal. Thats the risk of this plan. Host thank you so much for joining us today. And helping us to understand how this works a little bit. You will find more on the pp. Org. Cb thank you so much for joining us. The organizers of last januarys womens march on washington said again met in detroit for a womens conference. We will show you some of that event, including a keynote today we declare that we will not tolerate or egg nor a culture that defines Sexual Harassment and violence. We dont care who you are, how much my you have, how powerful you are and how you think you are powerful. Keep your comments away from us. And your allies to yourself. Box ur hands off our bodies. You can see more of the conference in detroit with california congresswoman waters at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Is ronald rubin , a former enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He is here to talk about the decision by current director Richard Cordray to retire and what that will mean for the future of the agency. Thank you so much for joining us today. Remind our viewers what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is and what it does. Guest it was created from the dodd frank act in 2010. It open for business in 2011. Enforcepposed to several Consumer Financial Protection Laws which were in some cases and forth by other agencies or bank regulators. They were also given additional powers themselves. The how long were you at what did you do that . Guest i was there for a year and a half. It is when things are being built here in i wrote a lot of important internal procedures. I worked with the current director Richard Cordray when he was the head of enforcement and that he was promoted or appointed to be director of the agency. Host talk a little bit about you said you have been critical about how the agency is run. Give us your view about how you think the agency, with the goal of the agency is and how it should be run. It was sold by Elizabeth Warren for chemo but the idea in 2007 before most people knew who she was. Agencya Law Enforcement to protect consumers from fraud, from deceptive contracts, fine print, things like that. By the time he got through the legislative process, it was a much Bigger Agency with theory vast powers with very vast powers. It was not funded through congress. Congress had no way of raining it in. Even the president cannot fire the director. A case study and why give anyd not Government Agency absolute power. Imagee the idea and the that people have was they would be going after banks. Nobody seen to mind. But if it absolute power over people, it would terrify them. Nobody really objected but as it played out in became much more of a political entity than a Law Enforcement agency. That theyr the years were much more concerned with their press releases and getting direct what will headlines out the door with actually protecting consumers which was their job. Host were joined by ronald rubin, a former enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We are talking about the agency and its future now its head, Richard Cordray, will be leaving. Democrats can call 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001. And defendants, 202 7488002. Independents, 202 7488002. Talk about Richard Cordray. Good a job has he done in leading this organization . It has had some high profile cases, including the wells fargo case in which some really terrible Business Practices were uncovered and addressed by the agency. Guest wells fargo, im glad he started with wells fargo. That is a perfect example of reality versus what people read in the news. In fact, wells fargo was the perfect case of what the cfpb should have been doing. There is no better if you could pick one thing the agency was designed to do, it was supposed to stop wells fargo. At least the fraud that ended up coming out. What happened was two years they were doing onsite examinations. They did not find those problems at all. Then in december of 2013, the l. A. Times broke the huge story detailing all the things that were going on. You think at that point they would jump in and get involved, but as a came out the comptroller of the currency and the Los Angeles City attorney investigated for over two years. The cfpb stepped back and let the other two agencies do all the work. They barely did any investigations at all. But because the law is so much spb of thes side cfpb side, they came in at the last minute when the other agencies had finished their investigations and the cfpb imposed the biggest find of the three. Their fine was one of 2 million. The other were 100 million. A night on the news he saw Richard Cordray on the National News saying this is horrible. Everybody in the world thought, josh, cfpb did all the work. Not only did they not investigate, they rushed at the end so they could get a settlement said they could be there on the podium with the other two agencies and they can look like they were actually the leader. What happened was over the next year you saw it turned out there were many, many more violations than nobody investigated and they went back for much further. Sold all things short. The whole thing short. The argument that wells fargo shows that you need the cfpb is an off argument. You need it operating, properly functioning cfpb, but not the way it was running. Guest were joined by former cfpb enforcement attorney ronald rubin. We are talking about the future of the agency. Fred on the independent line from st. Paul, minnesota. Caller hi. Is i was trying to get my Interest Rate lower with wells fargo. Im currently at 5. 5 . I feel if i should be able to have with the going is just rates are. My Credit Rating is good. It turns out the cfpb sets the rate for the debt to income ratio. Which mine did not qualify for me to get a refinance for a lower rate. I actually called al frankens office. My comment was they should change it from the cfpb to the pfpb. In my case it seems as if it is group, a Bank Protection bank finance protection agency, which did not surprise me. Who writes these bills . I dont think the consumers are that much involved with writing this bill. I suspect the banks might have a lot to do with it. Host let me ask ronald rubin, what does the cfpb with respect to issues like this . Guest there are two issues. First was Interest Rates. The law forbids the cfpb from in any way influencing Interest Rates for anybody. The other issue was the qualified mortgage ability to pay, which was the first thing the cfpb had to do with was supposed to prevent another financial collapse. They were giving out mortgages to people who should not having getting it. One thing a criticized the agency for was if you ask experts what is the one thing fault, it isthe people should have some kind of down payment. Some kind of a deposit or skin in the game. When they started to write the rules, there was one included. Then the consumer advocates got involved. The left wing. The liberal groups and they said, well, if you have a minimum down payment on a mortgage, for people with not be able to get a mortgage. If you think about it, cap is the whole point. That was the whole point. And set of that they ended up pages of hard 900 to discern rules of what makes you able to pay, not able to pay. They created this debt to income ratio which is hard to calculate. One thing that did come out of that was that they made mortgages very manilla. It was onesizefitsall. For many years people have difficulty getting mortgages because they are trying to fit them in a very narrow definitions. I think if they wrote a one page will it said everybody has to put down 10 on their mortgage, that would probably have prevented the vast majority of defaults and everybody wouldve understood what was going on. Host terry from wisconsin, you were on with ronald rubin. Caller i have a couple of questions. They have made a ruling regarding wells fargo where their own employees of wells fargo were setting up accounts for people who already had a council wells fargo. Accounts with wells fargo. I have to take money out of either a checking or savings are cash might have on hand to start these accounts. Im trying to figure out how it was that wells fargo where did the money come from initially to start the fraudulent accounts for people . Whot you have employees were given bigger bonuses or incentivized basin have any new accounts they opened. They would go into an account without telling them unless you havd is a cap with money in it, and it would open a credit card or a Checking Account and then it would close it. The consumer would never know there was an account opened and closed in their name. A lot of times some people may say what is the harm in that . If you want to go get a mortgage, your Credit Rating would have been lower because you opened another account, or possibly would have and you would end up paying a higher Interest Rate the entire time of your mortgage. It was hard to quantify the m, but it was a serious especially given the number of accounts ever opened without people knowing it. You are right. Certainly you should know if an account is opened in your name and that was a problem. Host what are the names floated as a potential replacement for cordray is mick mulvaney. Washington post reports President Trump is considering naming him to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on an interim basis, possibly setting up a Watchdog Agency for a massive overhaul according to people briefed on the planning. That potentially set up a Watchdog Agency for a massive overhaul look like . Guest first of all there is some limit when you say overhaul, certain things would require legislation to actually change. Culminating r. Mr. Mulvaney. Quite frankly there are other names being floated before then. I had not thought of mr. Mulvaney. I think he is a Perfect Choice. He has gone on to the record saying harsh things about the agency, for the reason i think he is a Perfect Choice is first of all he does understand the agency and the issues. Second of all, he is kind of the counterpart to Elizabeth Warren and that he does what he thinks, hes very straightforward and not intimidated. Job forbe really hard republicans to fix what is wrong with the agency now. One thing that might change is employees, the Largest Group in the agency are the supervision. Of people who go into banks, payday lenders, credit card companies, whoever is under the jurisdiction of the cfpb for supervision purposes and, like in the case of wells fargo, look and find things going wrong. I think it has not been run well. I think they would have had a good grip on wells fargo long before it became public if that were the case. That is also very expensive because you have people all over the country. They have to travel a lot to wherever the people they are examining our. Examining are. I think there will be a lot of things that have been kept under wraps that are going to come out stonewalled apb lot. Y had the ability to work not turn over documents and things being asked for. Probably the first thing that will come out will be you will find out a lot. About what really happened at wells fargo and how much the cfpb really good in the investigation. Host good morning. Caller good morning. Sir, since you dont work for them no more i would like an honest answer. The equifax deal. Shouldnt somebody be in trouble for this . Should they be looking into that . The should be protecting consumer and obviously they failed badly. Thank you very much for cspan. Guest thats a very good question. And theyt the agency are not talking about things confidential. There is somewhat of a limit of what i know about this. The federal trade Commission Also has jurisdiction over equifax. The dodd frank act says only one or the other can do an investigation at the same time. I believe it is the ftc handling it. That is what you have heard the cfpb was silent about it. I believe they are not handling most of that matter. Certainly this is even worse than wells fargo. People who had no business with equifax ended up having their information hacked. I doubt when the republicans or democrats, nobody is not outraged by this. When i was of the agency i thought the Credit Rating agencies were probably one of the first and that shouldve been fixed because if you have a problem with your credit score, you call in and they put on hold for three hours. It is just not run in any way at all in a consumerfrom a manner. Consumerfriendly manner. Host what power does the cfpb to address that . Ftc stepsuming the out of the way when you have two agencies that have to cornet with each other, if it were just the cfpb alone, they can go in. They can examine, look at all the systems, make sure they have sensors for hacking in place. After the act they can have fines and things like that. Given they are a supervised entity, the cfpb can just about cap out inside iraq campout insider offices and make sure they do things right. They have an enormous amount of power. It may be the ftc said this is our area. We have handled this for a long time. You just a in the background. Host james from pennsylvania on the republican line. You are on with ronald rubin. Caller thank you for coming in today and thank you for your candor. I work in Financial Services on a different side. Scc often comehe in. The confidence of the examiners is sometimes very questionable. They dont seem to know what the skeletons are buried in many different ways. Im beginning to wonder if maybe that is the issue here with this agency as well. The second part of my question is the compensation of the people in sales and how their Sales Department to run. I currently work in sales supervision for a brokerdealer. I know we often run into obstacles with management and executive level interference with sales supervision. Have you seen any of that in terms of the examinations while you were there with bank or loan entities interfering with sales supervision . And how do you decouple the compensation from these people who do dishonest things . Ive listen to your answer. Basic and for cspan. Guest first of all, as i mentioned, i think probably the supervision part of the cfpb is the worst or among the worst run parts of the entire agency. I worked many years for the sec as well. Getting good examiners is very hard to do. People that come and go. Bank supervisors are kind of an interesting comparison because they tend to stay longer. They know their business but but they were criticized for was being in bed with the banks. They call it industry capture. They were to close with the people they were examining. It is kind of a hard balance to me between the two. Far as sales, that was the problem with wells fargo. You were incentivizing your salespeople to do something, and then you are not watching the way they did it. When you incentivize somebody to do something, you have to make sure you also have guardrails so than a go too far in their sales practices. Host there have been concerns from consumer watchdog groups about the departure of director cordray and the appointment of mr. Mulvaney. According to nbc news, in the wake of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordrays surprising resignation announcement, consumer what shocks watchdogs were worried they would see its mission undermined despite speculation he might leave the post vacant. President donald trump is rumored to be considering mulvaney. Lawmakers have been quick to criticize the choice, seeing his wish to abolish the agency entirely. Reaction to the fears of advocates, and the you think getting rid of the cfpb but perhaps be better in your view that how its operating now . Guest well, thats a good question. The choices are how its operating out in getting rid of it, thats a hard question. I would like to think the answer is it can be operated properly. There is a place for this. Made some of his most critical comments while he was in congress. If it given the job of right i believe you take the job seriously and mr. Mulvaney would take the job seriously and run it and try to fix it rather than just trying to eliminate it. Sunlight will be good for this agency. One that any agency day at think this will be taught in classes as a case study of organizational problems. That you need to have sunlight. Sunlight is very healthy. I believe mr. Mulvaney, if he is in factand if mr. Mulvaney is cs the interim director and do the job in good faith. One thing i had written was, every time republicans fpb,icized the cf pd c they say you love the big banks. I have been a vocal critic of it, but i have no interest in the banks in anyway. I would say that most republicans are not billionaires, not even millionaires, but we are all consumers and nobody likes to get ripped off. I am sure mr. Mulvaney does not like to get ripped off. To somehow say that he does not believe in that mission, i think that is a false statement from the start. Host ok. We have melanie on the line. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Listening to you for the last 20 minutes or so, do we as consumers and americans, should we trust this agency right now considering who is, considering the administration . Ronald under director cordray . Caller under the current administration, period. Ronald theyre all kinds of agencies that when republicans take over the government, they do not stop doing their jobs. There are many that are not political idol. At all. I remember there were several changes of administration when i was there and i never noticed it. I went to work, i investigated illegal behavior and i did my job. I do not think that there is really any the consumer should not feel worried they want to have somebody protecting them, just because republicans are running the agency. By the way, it is not like five republicans will walk in the door and 1600 democrats will walk out the door, there will still be many career professionals who go to work every day and to do their jobs. Host ok. Ronald rubin, a former attorney at the protections bureau. You can find more at his website ronaldlrubin. Com. And you can find him on cspan washington journal, live every day with news, policy issues that impact you. 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