As the cost of living continues to spiral upward, the Trump administration is gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency built to protect Americans from financial ruin. Created by Elizabeth Warren under the authority of the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB has issued $21 billion in direct relief to consumers and recovered $5 billion in civil penalties from big banks, tech companies, and other entities. Anyone could file a complaint against a business through the bureau’s online portal. The CFPB helped people avoid home foreclosure, protected them from the toll of exorbitant medical debt, and got student loans forgiven. Now it’s a shell:
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary injunction, ordering the bureau to retain employees and perform the obligations laid out under Dodd-Frank. The agency appealed the case, which is ongoing. (At a three-hour oral argument last month, an attorney for the Trump Administration argued that the bureau would technically still exist even if the entire staff was eliminated.) Vought complied with the prohibition against layoffs but didn’t let employees do much beyond what his deputy, Adam Martinez, referred to as “closeout duties.” Workers reluctantly dropped lawsuits and settlements, scrubbed educational materials from the internet, and reversed regulations and interpretive rules. No new companies were examined or investigated. (“We’ve been insanely busy since we took over the agency a year ago,” a CFPB spokesperson wrote, in an e-mail, contesting this account. “If you were to pay attention to our reports, court cases, etc you would know that.”) Six months into Vought’s tenure, Hardy, the examiner, told me, “I’ve been given one assignment, and that was to close a supervisory action.” Like other federal employees, she was required to list five accomplishments in a weekly e-mail. “I’d just copy and paste: ‘I did not violate Director Vought’s stop-work order,’ ” she said. In July, she met with her manager for a midterm review, but there was nothing to review. The CFPB has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to employees who aren’t allowed to do their jobs.
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