Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Mick Mulvaney was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus. He doesn't believe the bureau should even exist and he's done everything in his power as director to shut down the agency's investigations and allow financial predators to walk free, but he has found at least one use for the bureau's budget.
The Associated Press reports that Mulvaney has been paying his political appointees enormous salaries making them some of the highest paid individuals in all of government.
Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart from those who sit on the Supreme Court. [...]
In a statement, a CFPB spokesperson blamed [former Director Richard Cordray] for the elevated salaries that Mulvaney’s appointees are making, saying “non-career staff are being paid on par with the career staff who directly report to them.” Mulvaney himself is not making a salary as acting director, and earns a salary as Trump’s budget director.
Not only are Mulvaney's appointees making far more money than their predecessors, Mulvaney also reportedly created entirely new positions that didn't exist before which he filled with his cronies. And Richard Cordray is clearly not responsible for this because Mulvaney's chief of staff is making nearly $50,000 more per year ($259,500) than Cordray's chief of staff did ($212,324).
We can't necessarily say Mulvaney is wasting taxpayer dollars because the CFPB is funded by the Federal Reserve, not Congress, but he's definitely wasting someone's money.
As far as we know, the CFPB doesn't even do anything under Mulvaney. They certainly aren't intervening on behalf of consumers.