Today a group of 193 civil rights, community, consumer, labor, faith-based, small business, farm, and other organizations urged the Senate to stand up for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and oppose devastating attacks on its budget and independence in the budget reconciliation bill.
Faith leaders, union members, and consumer advocates rallied outside CFPB headquarters on June 5 with a unified message to Congress: gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s budget is a direct attack on the people that the CFPB protects every day.
Earlier this week, the Trump CFPB withdrew the agency’s previously proposed data broker rule, which would have limited how our sensitive and private financial data is collected, used, and sold. With little to no other regulation over data brokers, the withdrawal of this rule will allow companies to collect and sell our private and sensitive financial data to third party strangers without oversight or accountability.
Today, President Trump signed two laws that overturned commonsense consumer protections from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one capping overdraft fees and one supervising digital payment apps. Trump’s presidential signature paves the way for banks to harvest billions of dollars in fees and eliminates privacy and account protections for millions of digital payment app users.
Earlier today, Russell Vought, Trump’s acting director, announced plans to begin the withdrawal of 67 measures undertaken by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the past fifteen years, across areas including credit reports, consumer complaints, credit cards, and servicemember rights.
Since its creation, the bureau has recovered over $21bn for defrauded consumers through enforcement actions against major financial institutions, including a $3.7bn order against Wells Fargo in 2022. There has been broad support for the agency, with a September poll from Americans for Financial Reform finding that 91% of voters believed it is important to regulate financial services to make sure they are fair for consumers – including 95% of Democrats and 87% of Republicans.
The most recent plans for the CFPB from the Trump Administration—additional dramatic staff cuts, a narrowing of the agency’s focus, and a reduction in supervision and enforcement—all send the same dangerous message: that bad actors in finance have permission to rip people off with impunity.
Let’s be clear: Hal Scott’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—because the Fed has been running a deficit—isn’t just a bad policy recommendation; it’s an intentionally backward argument that advocates harming the very people the financial system has historically exploited.
This week, the Trump administration withdrew a 2022 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) lawsuit against MoneyGram for its persistent failure to comply with consumer protection laws by failing to promptly deliver transfers, resolve disputes, and implement policies to comply with the law. The Trump CFPB’s refusal to hold MoneyGram accountable for its repeated and ongoing unlawful behavior is part of a pattern of willfully ignoring lawbreaking and letting financial scofflaws off the hook.
Congressional Republicans are showing their Big Tech true colors. Today, House Republicans will push to repeal a commonsense rule that requires payment apps like Cash App and PayPal to follow the same consumer protection rules as the payment apps the banks offer.