The Trump administration’s Feb. 8 order that employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau halt much of their work amounts to an existential crisis for a government agency that itself was born from crisis.
The CFPB was launched in 2011 under President Barack Obama following the housing industry meltdown that devastated the global economy. The agency’s mission: to protect Americans from abuse by financial firms; ensure that industry players follow consumer protection rules governing everything from home loans to credit cards; and help regulate a sector implicated in the biggest U.S. economic collapse since the Great Depression.
Republican lawmakers and other critics have long attacked the CFPB, saying it lacked accountability and imposed burdensome regulations on the financial industry. Supporters of the agency say it has played a vital role safeguarding consumers.
Why was the CFPB created?
The CFPB is an independent government agency that was established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis as lawmakers implemented financial reform. The economic spiral that followed the subprime mortgage meltdown, dubbed the Great Recession, proved devastating for millions of Americans and caused cascading economic problems around the world. The disaster wiped out almost $8 trillion in stock market wealth and $6 trillion in home value.
Set up to protect consumers from questionable financial products, corporate fraud and scams, the CFPB was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law by Obama in 2010.
What does the CFPB do?
The CFPB implements and enforces a range of consumer finance laws, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which among other things helps ensure the accuracy and privacy of people’s credit reports. The agency also issues and enforces financial regulations.
As part of its duties, the CFPB also issues refunds to consumers harmed by financial firms, works to arrange loan and debt relief for eligible borrowers, and imposes fines on companies found to have broken the rules. Some of the agency’s achievements, according to the CFPB and consumer advocates:
- Securing $20 billion in relief for consumers, including reducing loan balances and erasing debt, since the agency’s launch
- Imposing $5 billion in civil monetary penalties against businesses and individuals who violate consumer protection laws
- Penalizing banks and other companies for activities such as opening fake accounts and improperly charging “junk” fees
- Banning excessive credit card late-payment fees (a federal judge in 2024 moved to block that CFPB rule)
- Tightening rules for “buy now, pay later” loans, ensuring that consumers who use this increasingly form of credit are protected
- Safeguarding U.S. servicemembers from illegal loans
- Banning medical debt from from consumers’ credit report
“It’s a law enforcement agency. It takes big financial institutions to court who cheat consumers, whether it’s a credit reporting agency, or a large bank or a credit card giant,” Rohit Chopra, who was fired by President Trump as director of CFPB earlier this month, said in an interview aired on NPR on Monday. “The CFPB has been recovering billions of dollars for consumers who were wronged.”
In the weeks leading up to Chopra’s departure, the CFPB targeted a number of large institutions in a flurry of legal actions. That included suing Capital One for allegedly misleading people about its offerings for high-interest savings accounts and accusing Experian of improperly investigating consumer complaints of errors in credit reports. Both Capital one Experian dispute the allegations.
The CFPB in December also said that more than 4 million Americans allegedly gouged by credit repair companies including Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com would soon collectively be refunded $1.8 billion.
What do the CFPB’s critics say?
Funded by the Federal Reserve, the CFPB has weathered multiple legal challenges from opponents over its short life as a regulatory agency. The Supreme Court in May upheld its funding structure, which had been challenged by the payday lending industry.
The CFPB had been “a woke & weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time. This must end,” new CFPB director Russ Vought wrote in a Feb. 9 social media post. Vought previously served as Office of Management and Budget director in the first Trump administration and was involved in writing the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which called for eliminating the agency.
“That was a very important thing to get rid of,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday from the Oval Office. Asked if his intention was to eliminate the agency, he Trump replied, “I would say, yeah, because we’re trying to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.”
The White House press office declined further comment. Spokespeople at the CFPB and the Heritage Foundation also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
If one is looking to root out redundancy in federal government, the CFPB is a “great place to start,” Norbert Michel, vice president and director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, told CBS MoneyWatch. “It’s completely untrue that there was no consumer protection in financial markets prior to the CFPB,” said Michel, who lists the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as among the regulators already on hand.
Still, while long an advocate of pulling the plug on the agency’s operations, Michel was unclear on the White House’s tactics.
“Congress created this thing, and I don’t understand how that’s possible for the executive branch to truly get rid of a federal agency that Congress created, whether I like it or not,” said Michel. “I don’t know what the end game is — I don’t know what they are trying to do,” the economist and statistician said of the Trump administration’s efforts at pulling the plug on the CFPB’s work.
A union representing employees at dozens of federal agencies is suing to block the agency’s shutdown. Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who proposed the idea of the CFPB before entering Congress when she was still a law professor at Harvard University, are pushing to keep the CFPB running.
“If you have a bank account, or credit card or mortgage or student loan, this is code red. I am ringing the alarm bell. Elon Musk and the guy who wrote Project 2025, Russ Vought, are trying to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If they succeed, CEOs and Wall Street will once again be free to trick, trap and cheat you,” Warren stated in a videotaped post.
