Buried at the bottom of an otherwise insipid New York Times piece whining about people getting paid more money to do a job because they’re really good at what they do, is this description of the way Mick Mulvaney is running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

There’s a lot to like in here.

Weirdly, I think the Times intended for these to be criticisms:

Mr. Mulvaney is starving the bureau of cash. He requested $0 last quarter from the Federal Reserve, which funds the bureau, and instead drew on a $177 million reserve fund the agency had stockpiled.

He has described some payroll cuts he would like to make.

“I found out yesterday that I’m paying people – it’s amazing what you learn in these places – I’m paying people at the C.F.P.B. to do economics research on climate change,” Mr. Mulvaney said last month at a meeting of state attorneys general. “Not sure how that happened, but we’re going to see if we can’t figure out a way to change that.”

Mr. Mulvaney is scheduled to appear next week before two congressional committees, where Democrats are likely to grill him on his decision to end lawsuits against and investigations of some payday lenders. The agency has initiated no new enforcement actions since Mr. Mulvaney took over.

This week, Mr. Mulvaney repeated his plea for Congress to hamstring the agency – which he called “far too powerful, and with precious little oversight” – by stripping away its funding and rule-making power.