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Warren Says Trump and Musk Pushing to Gut CFPB as 'Payoff to the Rich Guys'
"If they succeed, CEOs and Wall Street will once again be free to trick, trap, and cheat you," said the Democratic senator.
Feb 10, 2025
As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website went dark and its offices were shuttered on Monday, with the agency's chief operating officer telling staff it would be shut down for the week, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was among the progressive leaders calling out the attack on the CFPB as one whose real target is working families across the country.
Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez's message to staffers followed a weekend directive from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, which ordered the agency to "cease all supervision and examination activity."
As Common Dreamsreported Saturday, President Donald Trump's billionaire backer, Elon Musk, posted the words "RIP CFPB" on his social media platform X, late last week. Musk has a vested interest in shutting down the agency due to his plan to partner with Visa on a peer-to-peer payment system on X—the kind of financial venture that CFPB would oversee as it fights to ensure Americans aren't overcharged and scammed by big businesses.
In addition to helping ensure the federal government won't hold Musk's new business accountable, said Warren (D-Mass.), Trump is intent on securing "a payoff to the rich guys who invested in his campaign and who want to cheat families and not have anybody around to stop them."
"If you have a bank account or a credit card or a mortgage or student loan, this is code red. I am ringing the alarm bell," said Warren in a video posted to social media. "If they succeed, CEOs and Wall Street will once again be free to trick, trap, and cheat you."
President Trump campaigned on lowering costs. But he’s letting billionaire Elon Musk and Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If they succeed, CEOs on Wall Street will once again be free to cheat you out of your savings.
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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) February 10, 2025 at 9:30 AM
The agency shut down this week as the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB workers, filed two lawsuits against Vought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia over the Trump administration's takeover of the agency.
The union is seeking to block the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), the advisory body led by Musk, from gaining access to CFPB employee data.
It also alleges that Vought's halting of the agency's operations "reflects an unlawful attempt to thwart Congress' decision to create the CFPB to protect American consumers."
Trump's attempt to shut down the agency is "another scam," said Warren—a former law professor who proposed and then helped build the CFPB before joining Congress.
"For years, Republicans have tried and tried again to repeal it in Congress and they have failed every single time," said the senator. "Congress built the CFPB, and no one other than Congress—not the president, not Musk, not Vought—can shut it down."
Trump, Musk, and other powerful CEOs want the CFPB shut down, Warren said, because "this little agency has forced giant banks and corporations to give back more than $21 billion directly to families they cheated."
In a statement, government watchdog Accountable.US said the attack on the agency is "a direct gut punch to American consumers, and a long-awaited gift to big banks that have been lobbying against the CFPB since before it was established by the landmark law to protect consumers in the wake of the 2007–08 Great Recession. It pauses ongoing investigations into cases of fraud and predatory practices by banks that rip off American consumers."
The group also noted that attempts to shut down a bureau that has directly financially benefited working families and held Wall Street accountable is just the latest evidence that, despite the populist tone he struck during his campaign, Trump is breaking his promises "to lower costs and protect American consumers."
Accountable.US also pointed to the $3,900 more the typical U.S. family would pay in taxes under Trump's tax plan and the executive action the president rescinded that was aimed at lowering prescription drug costs.
"Attacking the CFPB is the latest reminder that Trump's Washington will always put the interests of big banks, corporations, and his billionaire donors ahead of the American people," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk. "In its more than a decade as an agency, the CFPB has put billions of dollars back into the pockets of American families and held big banks accountable for predatory practices that scam consumers and raise their costs. Gutting the agency all but confirms that Trump and Musk are reimagining the government to service themselves at the expense of Americans—who will without a doubt see their costs rise as a result of these efforts."
While DOGE has swept through the offices of numerous government agencies in recent weeks, claiming it's cutting costs for American taxpayers and improving efficiency, organizer Leah Greenberg said the attack on CFPB and other agencies "isn't about saving money."
"It's about making it easier for the ultrarich to keep scamming the rest of us, unchecked and unchallenged," said Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible. "And let's not forget: Musk isn't just any billionaire throwing his weight around—he has clear conflicts of interest with massive financial stakes in industries regulated by the very agencies he's trying to dismantle."
Warren said Democratic lawmakers "will not let up in Congress or the courts until we win this fight."
"There is power in fighting back," said the senator, "so please call your representative and most of all, get the word out. We are here to fight for the little agency that fights for us."
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Trump's Billionaire Appointee Targets Consumer Protections by Halting All CFPB Operations
Appointment of billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to lead key agency, warned one advocate, "opens the floodgates for corporate abuse and financial scams."
Feb 03, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he has installed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, to serve as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, and corporate America.
The news comes days after Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the consumer champion who served as head of the CFPB under former President Joe Biden and secured more than $6 billion in consumer relief during his tenure.
Soon after taking charge of the CFPB, Bessent ordered the bureau to "stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation, and other activities," Bloomberg Lawreported Monday, citing an email to agency staff.
"A source inside the bureau who asked to remain anonymous said the order appeared to shut down the CFPB altogether, for the time being," the outlet added.
Politicoreported that Bessent also directed staff to "suspend the effective dates of rules that haven't gone into effect yet." Among the rules now in limbo is a measure that, if enacted, would save consumers billions of dollars per year in overdraft fees.
Tony Carrk, executive director of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement Monday that "we can only hope that Bessent continues former Director Rohit Chopra's legacy standing up to price gouging and fraud, but I fear his appointment opens the floodgates for corporate abuse and financial scams."
"President Trump has held himself up as a champion for working Americans, but his plans for the CFPB are just another example of the administration's billionaires-first, consumers-last agenda," said Carrk. "While he parades a crowd of corporate lobbyists, billionaire donors, and Wall Street insiders like Scott Bessent to lead our country, we're looking at the end of basic protections for American consumers."
Trump's decision to place a Cabinet official in charge of the CFPB mirrors the approach he took during his first White House term, when he installed CFPB opponent Mick Mulvaney—who was then in charge of the Office of Management and Budget—at the helm of the consumer bureau.
"In both cases," The American Bankernoted Monday, "Trump is picking a director who is expected to move quickly to freeze existing rules and enforcement actions, while also halting and starting to rescind all nonbinding interpretive rules, guidance, and proposals. One of Mulvaney's first moves was to strip the agency's fair-lending office of enforcement powers, demoting the fair-lending division, which had previously been equal alongside supervision and enforcement."
Bessent, whose elevation to acting head of the CFPB was applauded by bank lobbyists, is currently facing close scrutiny and backlash over his decision last week to give Musk agents access to the Treasury Department's payment system.
In a letter to Bessent on Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—an architect of the CFPB—expressed alarm that "as one of your first acts as secretary, you appear to have handed over a highly sensitive system responsible for millions of Americans' private data—and a key function of government—to an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies."
"The American people deserve answers about your role in this mismanagement, which threatens the privacy and economic security of every American," Warren added.
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Senate Confirms Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Bessent as Treasury Secretary
"Don't expect Scott Bessent to fight for working families," said Groundwork Collaborative.
Jan 27, 2025
Government watchdog groups on Monday responded critically to the U.S. Senate's bipartisan confirmation of Republican President Donald Trump's nominee for treasury secretary, billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent.
"Donald Trump spent months promising American workers they'd have no greater friend and advocate than him. But his first order of business as president-elect was to nominate a stack of corporate lobbyists, billionaire donors, and Wall Street insiders like Scott Bessent to carry out a wealthy-first, workers-last agenda," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk in a statement after the 68-29 vote.
"Another giant Trump tax giveaway to price gouging corporations won't lift up working people, but it will put Social Security and Medicare at risk," Carrk continued. "A national Trump sales tax won't be much help to working families when it results in thousands of dollars in extra costs every year. Bessent is so enthusiastic about the Trump trickle-down economic plans because it keeps the system rigged in favor of wealthy insiders like him, while everyday Americans pay the price."
Recalling congressional Republicans' and Trump's massive tax cuts for the rich during his first term, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens declared Monday that "a billionaire hedge fund manager who doesn't pay his own taxes is now Trump's right-hand man for another massive tax break for the ultrawealthy. The president is filling his Cabinet with one goal in mind: more tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations."
Anne Perrault, senior finance policy counsel with Public Citizen, said in a Monday statement that "Scott Bessent is an oligarch who spent a career serving rich clients. He will need to make a hard pivot toward understanding that sound policy must serve average Americans, including by saving banks and achieving a fair tax system."
"Under Bessent, the Treasury Department appears poised to attend only to the largest lenders and investors," Perrault warned. "This is in contrast to the past four years, where the department took necessary, though insufficient, steps to address climate change as a 'unique, existential risk for the planet that will affect every aspect of our lives and the lives of our children' and, in turn, pose a 'tremendous risk to our country's financial stability.' By ignoring climate change as a financial risk, Trump's Treasury Department under Bessent, is on a path that could devastate hard-working families."
Ahead of the vote, a coalition of other watchdogs on Monday launched a "No Corporate Cabinet" website raising the alarm about "persons of interest" selected to serve in the second Trump administration, including Bessent. The site describes him as "a former investor for billionaire George Soros" who "made a name for himself by bringing down the British economy in the 'Black Wednesday' scandal of the 1990s," and pointed to investments in fossil fuel companies along with Meta, Monsanto, and Palantir.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Bessent said that he did not believe the federal minimum wage of just $7.25 an hour should be raised and promoted a "3-3-3" agenda that analysts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned "requires brutal cuts to health and nutrition and higher costs for families at the grocery store."
After the Senate's Monday vote, Bessent said on social media that "as treasury secretary, I'm committed to eliminating income taxes, replacing them with a fair consumption tax, and adopting a gold-backed currency. We'll erase debt, restore financial privacy, and unlock new technologies for a prosperous future. The golden age starts now."
Progressives have argued against a so-called "fair consumption tax," or a national sales tax, because of its impacts—which CAP analysts explained in 2023, in response to Rep. Earl "Buddy" Carter's (R-Ga.) Fair Tax Act, which he reintroduced earlier this month.
"By shifting the foundation of the federal tax system from income to consumption, the Fair Tax Act would cut taxes for the wealthy while increasing taxes paid by low- and middle-income retirees who live off of Social Security and savings, as well as families who would be forced to pay more taxes on everyday goods and services," the CAP experts wrote. "Meanwhile, high-income families who spend less of their income on consumption and who have sufficient earnings to save a substantial fraction of their income would pay a smaller share of their income in tax."
Politicoreported that "Bessent on Monday garnered significantly more Democratic support than Trump's first Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. The Senate confirmed Mnuchin in 2017 on a 53-47 vote, in which then-Sen. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat who backed him." Manchin later became an Independent, before leaving Congress at the end of the last session.
Bessent is the fifth Cabinet member to be confirmed by the Senate since Trump took office a week ago. The closest vote was on the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth; Vice President JD Vance on Friday had to break a tie after Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined Democrats in opposing him.
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