Trump Nominates OMB Veteran Levenbach to Head CFPB

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) may be getting a new director. However, one Democratic senator said that the nomination may be a ploy to keep the current acting director in that position as he shuts down the bureau.

President Donald Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach of Maryland for a five-year term as CFPB director on Tuesday (Nov. 18) and the Senate referred the nomination to the Senate Banking Committee, according to a nomination page on Congress.gov.

Levenbach is currently the vice chair of the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington, D.C., according to his LinkedIn profile. He was appointed to that post by Trump on July 9, according to a biography on the commission’s website.

From February to November, Levenbach was associate director, natural resources, energy science and water at the Office of Management and Budget, per his LinkedIn profile.

When Levenbach joined the OMB, the agency said in a press release that during the first Trump Administration, he served as a senior advisor in both the National Economic Council and the Council on Environmental Quality as well as the chief of staff for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Before that, he worked at OMB for 10 years as both a program examiner in the Resource Management Office Commerce Branch and a senior policy analyst in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs National Resources and Environmental Branch, according to the OMB’s press release.

According to Levenbach’s LinkedIn profile, that 10-year span at the OMB went from November 2007 to January 2018.

“I began my career studying kelp forests and have since led high impact initiatives in natural resource policy across both the public and private sector,” Levenbach’s LinkedIn profile said. “My work has spanned four offices within the Executive Office of the President focusing on budgetary and regulatory policy across multiple administrations.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a Wednesday statement: “Donald Trump’s sending the Senate a new nominee to lead the CFPB looks like nothing more than a front for Russ Vought to stay on as Acting Director indefinitely as he tries to illegally close down the agency.”

A background note included with the statement said that under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a person may serve as the acting head of an agency for only 210 days when the role is subject to presidential appointment and Senate confirmation, unless the president nominates another person for the position, in which case that time is extended.