Former FHFA Director Mark Calabria joins CFPB in interim role

Mark Calabria is the latest addition to the leadership roster at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), despite the bureau’s near shutdown. Calabria, director of the FHFA in President Trump’s first term, will be serving a key role at the CFPB until Jonathan McKernan is confirmed as the permanent director. That’s according to tweets from Andrew Ackerman of the Washington Post and Brendan Petersen from Punchbowl News on Wednesday afternoon.

Ackerman tweeted that Calabria started today at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and that “He will be detailed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until Jonathan McKernan is confirmed as the bureau’s new director.”

Petersen confirmed the news, tweeting that Calabria “told an audience at the Exchequer Club today he will be detailed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of OMB.”

The addition of Calabria caps off several volatile weeks at the bureau. Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra on Feb. 1 and named Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as interim director on Feb. 3. Five days later, Russell Vought took over that role and ordered staff to stop work, closing the headquarters and trying to shut off its funding. On Feb. 11, Trump named McKernan to the director role.

Calabria’s OMB role

Calabria is currently senior advisor at the libertarian Cato Institute. In addition to his previous role at FHFA, Calabria also served as chief economist to Vice President Mike Pence, as senior professional staff for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and as deputy assistant secretary for regulatory affairs at HUD.

Calabria’s interim stint at CFPB could be part of a much bigger role he will play at OMB. Ackerman also tweeted that he had “heard [Calabria] has been charged with bringing all the independent agencies into the OMB.” That’s a reference to Trump’s executive order on Tuesday that seeks to “rein in” all the independent agencies under his more direct control.

The executive order lists the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve. “Now they will no longer impose rules on the American people without oversight or accountability,” the order reads.

What Calabria envisions for the CFPB

In an interview with HousingWire Senior Reporter Flavia Nunes in July, Calabria spoke about how the CFPB might change under a Trump administration.

“I don’t think the CFPB is going away — as much as that would be nice. But I do think you are going to see a difference in the stance, which will matter in the mortgage industry, in terms of enforcement and obligations. The Republicans’ approach to the CFPB is to say that there are wrongdoers; we will go after the bad guys. This [Biden] administration says the same thing, and that’s where the overlap is. The difference is this [Biden] administration also has the view that we’re going to use the CFPB to pick winners and losers to redistribute to our friends and engage in a lot of social engineering. And that’s a much different approach from just going after the bad guys,” Calabria said.

“Writ large on compliance and regulatory costs, Trump’s CFPB will be considerably lower. Post Dodd-Frank, one of the problems has been that it costs so much more to originate loans. A tremendous amount of that is because of regulatory costs. It’s not like the bad guys get to run wild; you’d still see enforcement.”

Bureau faces lawsuits

The CFPB is currently facing two lawsuits over the Trump administration’s actions. A lawsuit brought by the City of Baltimore and the Economic Action Maryland Fund (EAMF) that was filed on Feb. 12 has stalled Vought’s efforts to cut off the bureau’s funding. On Feb. 13, the plaintiffs and defendants in the suit filed a joint motion stating that they’ve agreed to a preliminary injunction on any efforts by the CFPB or Vought to disrupt funding or shut down the department. The injunction expires on Feb. 28.

In a separate lawsuit filed late last week, a federal district court judge temporarily prohibited the Bureau from laying off more staff until March 3 at the earliest. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson also barred the CFPB from “deleting” or “removing” data and from transferring money in its reserve fund.