Budget Chief Russ Vought Takes Over as CFPB Acting Director

Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's nominee to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, testifies before a Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 22, 2025. Kaylee Greenlee Beal/Reuters

Russ Vought, the newly appointed White House budget director, has also been tapped to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Vought, who was confirmed as the White House budget chief in a 53–47 Senate vote on Feb. 6, has been named acting director of the CFPB, per OMB, as cited by Reuters.

With the appointment, Vought replaces Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who President Donald Trump recently named to helm the CFPB as its acting director after Rohit Chopra, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, departed.

CFPB and OMB did not respond to a request for more details about Vought’s appointment, in particular his plans for the agency.

The CFPB is a regulatory agency created under the Dodd-Frank Act after the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from predatory financial practices. Since its inception, the CFPB has been viewed by many conservatives and Republicans as overreaching and unaccountable, incentivized to impose penalties on businesses and hampering free markets.

Vought is one of the architects of the Project 2025 policy agenda that calls for the abolishment of the CFPB. The document describes the agency as “highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable,” which operates in violation of the U.S. Constitution and should be dismantled. It calls for the CFPB’s consumer protection function to be returned to banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission.

While Trump has distanced himself from the Project 2025 framework, his agenda involves a major deregulatory push and cost-cutting overhaul of federal agencies, central to which is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative led by Elon Musk. In recent months, Musk has taken the CFPB into his crosshairs.

“Delete CFPB,” Musk wrote in a post on social media platform X in late November 2024. “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.”

Musk, who has been working on dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in recent days, took to X on Feb. 7 to suggest that the CFPB is next.

“CFPB RIP,” Musk wrote. In a separate post, he said that “they did above zero good things, but still need to go.”

The CFPB employees union NTEU 335 said in a Feb. 7 statement that a number of DOGE team members have been added to the agency’s email directory and were spotted in the building. The union expressed concern about the potential for the mishandling of sensitive consumer and industry data that is stored at the agency.

“There is also the question of security concerns raised by DOGE individuals with outside business interests, as well as reporting that DOGE employees are using AI technology, which may not have undergone internal tests or for which there are no agency guidelines as to access and use, to analyze sensitive federal data,” the union wrote.

The union said it will use all available avenues, including legal ones, to protect sensitive data, while calling on “consumer advocates, industry stakeholders, lawmakers, and all concerned citizens to help us thwart this potentially dangerous incursion.”

In a separate announcement, the union was more explicit, accusing Musk of orchestrating a “power grab” at the CFPB in a bid to “attack union workers and defang the only agency that checks the greed of payment providers, as well as auto lenders like Tesla.”

The Epoch Times has contacted DOGE with a request for comment on the union’s claims.

Meanwhile, a 2019 lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the CFPB, with House Republicans arguing that its leadership structure violated the separation of powers. In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the CFPB’s structure was unconstitutional but allowed the agency to continue operating, requiring its director to be removable by the president at will.

The CFPB has staunch defenders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who championed the creation of the agency. Warren recently issued a statement vowing to oppose any efforts to “destroy the agency.”

“The agency has returned over $20 billion to consumers since its founding—protecting Americans from junk fees, medical debt, and predatory lending,” Warren wrote. “President Trump campaigned on capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent and lowering costs for Americans. He needs a strong CFPB and a strong CFPB Director to do that. But if President Trump and Republicans decide to cower to Wall Street billionaires and destroy the agency, they will have a fight on their hands.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

However, during a Feb. 7 press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump said he was “very proud” of DOGE’s work.

“They’re doing it at my insistence,” Trump said. “It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption and we’ve found tremendous corruption.”

Reuters contributed to this report.