The war on the CFPB isn’t about cutting government spending—it’s about protecting financial predators from accountability.
We’re a month into Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s new slash-and-burn-the-government-down reign. One major target is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the government oversight agency charged with protecting consumers from unfair and unethical practices like predatory lending rates for everything from home mortgages to used cars, junk charges such as “resort” fees at fleabag hotels, and surprise “processing fees” or “closing fees” that weren’t disclosed upfront for loans.
These protections will no longer exist if Trump and his sidekick Musk have their way.
On Feb. 8, acting CFPB director Russell Vought sent an email ordering employees at the consumer watchdog to stop virtually all work—including fighting financial abuse. “‘Effective immediately,” he wrote, “unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law, all employees, contractors and other personnel of the bureau shall … cease all supervision and examination activity.”
[The CFPB] publishes the details of the complaints on [its] website, complete with banks’ names and whether they responded promptly. It’s literally shaming banks into compliance.
CFPB was the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the wake of the 2007-2008 housing bubble and financial crisis, which was caused in part by fraudulent mortgage lending. Former President Obama made the bureau a reality, and from the beginning it has attracted lawsuits from large banks and financial industry trade associations.
And it’s no mystery why: The CFPB has been effective. It has obtained nearly $20 billion in financial relief for U.S. consumers in the form of canceled debts, compensation and reduced loans since its founding.
And it’s still on the beat: In January, the bureau sued Capital One for allegedly misleading consumers about its offerings for high-interest savings accounts—and cheating customers out of more than $2 billion in lost interest payments as a result.
But CFPB does more than just save consumers money. No doubt to the extreme aggravation of the financial perps, it publishes the details of the complaints on the CFPB website, complete with banks’ names and whether they responded promptly. It’s literally shaming banks into compliance. Perhaps more importantly, the CFPB has used the data it has collected to launch investigations, guide its oversight of banks and publicly chart lending trends that it deems unfriendly to consumers.
And it hasn’t gone unnoticed by consumers from both sides of the aisle, according to Lake Partners Research.
- Nearly four in five people, 79 percent, say they favor the agency.
- Two-thirds of independents (6 percent), 75 percent of Republicans and 86 percent of Democrats support the CFPB.
- Democratic favorability is particularly high, with 51 percent strongly favoring the agency.
Last year alone, CPFB recovered over $550 million in consumer relief (monetary compensation, principal reductions, canceled debts), and assessed over $750 million in penalties on bad actors in the financial field, including requiring an $18 million dollar payment to harmed African American and Hispanic borrowers.
Let’s be honest: The only reason a person in power would shut down America’s consumer watchdog is because that person is corrupt—and they want to do corrupt things—and they don’t like when anybody stops them from being corrupt.
Ken Martin, DNC chair
There’s little doubt this is one of the main reasons Trump and Musk are destroying it. Dennis Kelleher, president of the Better Markets advocacy group, put it this way: “That’s why Wall Street’s biggest banks and Trump’s billionaire allies hate the bureau: it’s an effective cop on the finance beat and has stood side-by-side with hundreds of millions of Americans—Republicans and Democrats—battling financial predators, scammers and crooks.”
DNC chair Ken Martin was a bit more blunt:
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put billions of dollars back into the pockets of families who were cheated by financial predators. Let’s be honest: The only reason a person in power would shut down America’s consumer watchdog is because that person is corrupt—and they want to do corrupt things—and they don’t like when anybody stops them from being corrupt. Trump and Musk are billionaire scam artists. They’re removing all the pesky obstacles and barriers that could get in the way of their fat cat friends making money by defrauding hard-working Americans.”
Enough said.
