The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has long been a target of Republican ire.
But now, efforts by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have some members of the Trump White House worried, Bloomberg News reported Saturday (Feb. 22).
Among those concerned are Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget and acting director of the CFPB, the report said, citing three sources briefed on the situation.
The worry here, sources say, is that a lack of discipline by DOGE could undermine work to control the CFPB, with court challenges allowing a more robust agency to thrive.
“You can’t just close an agency Congress created,” said Norbert Michel, who leads the policy group on financial regulation at the libertarian Cato Institute, referring to White House adviser/DOGE-adjacent Elon Musk’s calls to eliminate the CFPB. “You won’t win that fight in the end.”
A spokesperson for Vought told Bloomberg there were no tensions between DOGE and the administration, adding, “This story is false and another ax-to-grind story against DOGE.”
Sources told Bloomberg that DOGE has fired around 200 of the CFPB’s 1,700 workers. Vought, meanwhile, has told the rest of the staff not to do any work without clearance from an attorney for the Office of Management and Budget, the report added, citing emails included in court filings by the National Treasury Employees Union.
The CFPB’s consumer line — which fields more than 1 million complaints per year — was down briefly during DOGE’s probe into the agency, sources told Bloomberg.
“There are no cops on the beat now,” said Julie Morgan, a former associate director of research, monitoring, and regulations at the CFPB who stepped down. “From where I sit, consumers are left completely unprotected.”
Speaking with PYMNTS earlier this month, Amias Gerety — partner at QED Investors — said uncertainty surrounding the CFPB could cause further uncertainty in the financial world.
“If nobody’s home, you have financial services entities just trying to make their best guess,” Gerety, a former Obama administration assistant treasury secretary, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “‘Do your best’ is not a great way to run a financial services company.”
As that report noted, all of this is happening against widespread sentiment that the former director, Rohit Chopra, overreached, and the agency itself took on an overly aggressive stance on credit, fees and business models that underpin banking and payments — targeting both FinTechs and financial institutions under its purview.
“Not a lot of people are shedding tears,” Webster told Gerety.
