Acting Chief Halts Funding to Consumer Protection Agency, Says Not Needed

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Office of Management and Budget director, Russell Vought, testifies before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 15, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought, who recently took over as the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said on Feb. 8 that he is suspending the flow of new funding to the agency.

Vought scrutinized CFPB’s budget in a post on the evening of Feb. 8 on social media platform X. He said the agency’s $711.6 million in the bank is “excessive in the current fiscal environment.”

Further funding to CFPB is not “reasonably necessary” to carry out its duties, and future funding “is now being turned off,” Vought, who is the White House budget director, said.

“I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding,” he wrote.

“This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off.”

CFPB gets its financing through Federal Reserve budget requests instead of the typical appropriations process. The Supreme Court ruled that mechanism constitutional in 2024, but Republicans have long criticized the agency’s budgetary process.

The agency was created under the Dodd-Frank Act to protect consumers from predatory financial practices following the 2008 financial crisis. In the years since, many Republicans have criticized the CFPB for overreaching in its practices, accusing it of going too far with its penalties on some businesses.

Vought also sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Feb. 8, requesting zero dollars for the CFPB in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. He cited the agency’s more than $700 million in the bank and said, “By law, I must take account of this sum when determining the amount ’reasonably necessary' for the Bureau to fulfill its statutory authorities.”

Vought said the CFPB’s current funds are “more than sufficient—and are, in fact, excessive—to carry out its authorities in a manner that is consistent with the public interest.”

The Office of Management and Budget confirmed that Vought had been named acting director of the CFPB after the Senate voted to confirm him as the White House budget chief on Feb. 6.

Vought authored one chapter in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration. The project called for the abolishment of the CFPB, describing it as “highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable” and suggesting that it violates the U.S. Constitution. Project 2025 advocates returning the CFPB’s consumer protection function to banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission.

While President Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, several of his appointees, including Vought, were directly involved in its creation, and much of the president’s agenda involves a similar push for deregulation and cost-cutting at federal agencies.

Trump also signed an executive order creating the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been probing multiple federal departments in recent weeks to find budgetary waste.

Musk has also targeted CFPB, advocating its demise.

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

After working to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently, Musk mentioned CFPB again on X on Feb. 7 to indicate that it would meet a similar fate.

“CFPB RIP,” Musk wrote.

“They did above zero good things, but still need to go,” he added in a separate post.

In a Feb. 7 statement, the CFPB employees union NTEU 335 said that several DOGE associates had been added to the agency’s email directory and were seen in the building. The union is worried about DOGE potentially mishandling sensitive consumer and industry data 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.

DOGE did not respond to a request for comment regarding the union’s comments.

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.