Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, spent the weekend managing the shutdown of the federal government. On Tuesday, he turned his attention back to his secondary job running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency he would probably shut down if he could.
In a 1,118 word mission statement that was sent to the bureau’s staff on Tuesday, Mr. Mulvaney, the acting director, outlined a vision for an agency that enforces financial regulations and consumer protections with “humility and prudence” and that will no longer “push the envelope” when it comes to jurisdiction and scope. Mr. Mulvaney insisted that he would not shutter the bureau, if only because doing so would be against the law.