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project 2025
'So Much for Lowering Costs': Fury Over Musk's Death Wish for CFPB That Returned Over $20 Billion to Consumers
"The richest man in the world wants to shut down an agency that keeps people like him from ripping off the rest of us."
Feb 08, 2025
Defenders of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that has returned tens of billions of dollars to duped and defrauded U.S. consumers expressed outrage overnight and into Saturday after the independent agency was declared deceased by billionaire Elon Musk and its operations were handed over to the chief architect of the far-right Project 2025 Russell Vought.
Vought, who earlier this week was confirmed as head of the Office of Management and Budget by Senate Republicans, was named acting director of the CFPB by President Donald Trump, according to various reports.
The appointment of the far-right ideologue came less than a day after reports emerged that members of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) were granted access to key CFPB systems and Musk himself posted to his online social media X that the agency should "RIP," suggesting it was in the process of being dismantled or, in his mind, already killed.
"Since its creation, the Bureau has returned $21 billion to people's wallets by fighting against illegal financial charges, junk fees, debts, and fraud," said Mike Calhoun, president of the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending, in a statement on Saturday. Now, when people are already struggling to pay higher prices for necessities like eggs and milk, the Trump administration appears to have decided to deepen the pain by directly taking aim at the agency that helps keep our money safe."
"When people are already struggling to pay higher prices for necessities like eggs and milk, the Trump administration appears to have decided to deepen the pain by directly taking aim at the agency that helps keep our money safe."
"'Let them eat debt' is not a strategy for making America great again," Calhoun added, "and weakening the CFPB certainly isn't the way to keep working families, our financial markets, or our economy strong."
Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which challenges corporate encroachment on the common good, said, "Obviously this isn't about 'efficiency.' It's about dismantling law enforcement that protects Americans from corporate power."
Congressional Democrats also reacted with contempt to Musk's message and the news that the agency's systems—like those of other agencies DOGE has put its hands on—were under threat.
"Here is the richest man in the world bragging about eliminating an agency that has delivered $21 billion back to working-class families since its inception," said Democrats on the House Committee on Financial Services, led by Ranking Member Maxine Waters of California. "Even most Republicans want the CFPB to continue protecting them from being ripped off by abusive big banks and predatory lenders."
"Here are the FACTS: 81% of voters, both Republicans and Democrats, support the CFPB and want the agency to continue its work," said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), also a member of the committee. "Even so, Trump has moved to freeze the CFPB to take money out of YOUR pocket to line those of his billionaire friends."
In a letter sent to the CFPB on Friday—addressed to the previous acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose first act of business was reportedly to order a halt of "all meaningful work"—Waters, Vargas, and 79 other Democratic members of the House said they were "deeply alarmed and troubled that you appear to be launching the Trump Administration's plan to contravene the will of Congress and unlawfully 'delete' this popular consumer watchdog that enjoys the broad bipartisan support of four out of five Americans."
According to the letter:
... we understand that you have ordered staff to halt all meaningful work of the CFPB, including ordering staff to stop investigating violations of consumer financial protection laws or settling enforcement actions, basically letting bad actors off the hook. We also understand that you have arbitrarily ordered the suspension of all CFPB rules that have yet to take effect, which would delay billions of dollars in savings and credit opportunities for consumers, if not rob them entirely.
We urge you to immediately rescind what appears to be an illegal stop work order and allow the public servants at the CFPB to get back to work for the American people as required by law.
As of this writing, the CFPB's homepage (www.consumerfinance.gov) prominently displayed a 404 error message, though portions of the site appeared to be active.
In a Saturday statement, the Democrats on the House Finance Committee said the 404 image on the CFPB website was intentionally "deceptive," calling it "a brazen attempt to fool consumers and the public about the status" of the agency.
"As of this moment, links and pages are still up and functional on the website," the statement said, "including the Consumer Complaint portal and database and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database. Various aspects of the CFPB's web content is required by statute to be published and available on the CFPB's website."
"Let's be clear: the people cheering this the loudest are scammers and people who don't want you to keep your hard-earned dollars. So much for lowering costs."
Nadine Chabrier, counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, said the "deeply troubling" developments at the agency will "undermine the CFPB's mission to protect consumers from financial misconduct" of various kinds.
"CFPB has returned more than $20,000,000,000 to consumers since it was founded," said Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) on Friday evening in response to Musk's tweet. "Let's be clear: the people cheering this the loudest are scammers and people who don't want you to keep your hard-earned dollars. So much for lowering costs."
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Medicaid Work Requirements Could Boot 36 Million People Off Their Health Coverage: Report
"Work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," wrote the authors of an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Feb 07, 2025
As right-wing lawmakers pursue imposing conditions on Americans' ability to access Medicaid and other social services, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities this week published analysis warning that work requirements for Medicaid recipients could put 36 million Americans, or 44% of all Medicaid enrollees, at risk of losing their health insurance.
"Research shows that work requirements do not increase employment," according to the authors of the CBPP report, which was published on Wednesday. The authors argue that these types of requirements are based on the premise that Medicaid enrollees do not work, when data shows that they do.
"Nearly 2 in 3 adult Medicaid enrollees aged 19-64 already work, and most of the rest would likely not be explicitly subject to the requirement based on having a disability, caring for family members, or attending school," the report states.
The group estimates that of those 36 million people who could be impacted, 20 million are enrolled through the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.
While almost all Medicaid enrollees either work or would qualify for an exemption under most Medicaid work requirement proposals, according to CBPP, the report points to multiple past examples that indicate many enrollees still lose coverage with the imposition of work requirements due to "administrative burden and red tape."
For example, when Arkansas in 2018 temporarily implemented a policy that placed work requirements on Medicaid recipients, about 25% of enrollees subject to the requirements, some 18,000 people, lost coverage before a federal court paused the program seven months later.
As another example, New Hampshire implemented a short-lived Medicaid work requirement program in 2019 with more flexibility in reporting requirements and "more robust outreach efforts" in order to avoid Arkansas' mistakes, according to CBPP, but 2 in 3 enrollees who had to comply with the requirements "were likely to be disenrolled after just two months, amid reports of widespread confusion among enrollees about how to comply with the requirements."
The analysis—which the authors say is not an estimate of the number of people who will be impacted by a specific policy proposal—defines the population at risk of losing their coverage as adults between ages 19 and 64 who are not enrolled in Medicaid through disability pathways, i.e. a wider net of people than are specifically targeted in some recent GOP proposals.
The 36 million number is a larger group of enrollees compared to a previous CBPP estimate that was in response to a specific proposal whose work requirements would have targeted fewer people.
Multiple recent GOP proposals regarding Medicaid work requirements target "able-bodied" workers, though they vary in other specifics.
The far-right policy blueprint "Project 2025" calls for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to "clarify that states have the ability to adopt work incentives for able-bodied individuals" on Medicaid. And in late January congressional Republicans passed around a list of ideas for how to fund a bill full of GOP priorities that included imposing Medicaid work requirements for "able-bodied" adults without dependents, modeled after the Limit, Save, Grow Act, a bill passed by the House in 2023.
On Thursday, Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) reintroduced the Jobs and Opportunities for Medicaid Act, a bill that would require "able-bodied adults without dependents who receive Medicaid benefits to work or volunteer for at least 20 hours per week."
Because the Kennedy and Schmitt bill includes an exemption for adults with dependents, it would impact a smaller number of people than the CBPP's Thursday analysis. But still, as a general matter, "work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," according to the authors of the analysis. Republicans' January list of cost cut options estimated that adding Medicaid work requirements along the lines of what was specified in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would yield $100 billion in 10-year savings.
In a Friday letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), all 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote: "We urge you to reject proposals that use Medicaid as a piggy bank for partisan priorities and continue to defend the importance of this vital program."Keep ReadingShow Less
'Cowardice and Abdication': Democrats Grant Unanimous Consent to Adjourn Senate for 3-Day Weekend
"We're in a right-now hour-by-hour constitutional emergency and they have a duty to be at their posts."
Feb 07, 2025
Senate Democrats spent much of this past week warning of the authoritarian threat posed by President Donald Trump and his unelected billionaire wrecking ball, Elon Musk, and vowing to dispense with business as usual in the face of an escalating constitutional crisis.
But when Thursday night rolled around, not one Democratic senator objected to the GOP's request for unanimous consent (UC) to adjourn the chamber for a three-day weekend, infuriating advocates who are pushing the minority party to use every opportunity to obstruct Trump's nominees and far-right policy agenda.
"Letting an adjournment for the next four days go uncontested isn't just missing an opportunity to be annoying and waste time, though that's reason enough," Andy Craig, an election policy fellow at the Rainey Center, said Thursday. "It is granting the principle of the matter: We're in a right-now hour-by-hour constitutional emergency and they have a duty to be at their posts."
"The Senate adjourning for a long weekend right now isn't just some mundane procedural question," Craig added, "it is an act of cowardice and abdication, and it should be opposed as such in a way that clearly communicates that."
Under intensifying grassroots pressure to act like a real opposition party, Democratic senators did begin to slow-roll the chamber's procedures this week, including by using up all 30 hours of floor debate on the nomination of Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect confirmed with only GOP votes on Thursday to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), also objected to several unanimous consent requests Thursday evening, forcing the chamber to hold procedural votes to move forward with additional Trump nominees. Democrats also successfully delayed consideration of Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to lead the FBI.
Those are the kinds of tactics that progressives, including members of the party, are imploring Democrats to deploy at every turn as Trump and Musk continue their lawless rampage through the federal government with the approval of Republicans in Congress.
"No business as usual. No handshakes with extremists. Democrats must use every tool available to delay and defy the Trump-Musk coup. Anything less is complicity."
Democrats don't have the votes to tank Trump nominees in the Senate, but they do have myriad tools at their disposal to grind the chamber to a halt.
"That means doing more than engaging in performative acts of Resistance before heading home for a long weekend," Vanity Fair's Eric Lutz wrote Thursday. "Mitch McConnell didn't spend his time as minority leader conducting half-assed chants outside the halls of power; he was inside, scheming and maneuvering and using whatever power he had to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. That's how you turn we will win from a rally slogan to a reality. McConnell got a Supreme Court seat out of it. Have Schumer and the Democrats been doing anything nearly as politically productive to this point?"
Craig acknowledged Thursday that forcing a roll-call vote on a motion to adjourn for the weekend would not, in itself, have done "much more than annoy" the Republican majority.
But, he asked, "would forcing a roll-call vote on everything usually handled by UC grind the Senate to a standstill?"
"Yes, and that's not just something Schumer is refusing to do," Craig added. "Every single Democratic senator is refusing to do it."
As Senate Democrats relented without objection to the GOP's motion to adjourn for a three-day weekend, Republicans reportedly planned to work through the weekend on a sweeping reconciliation bill that's expected to propose massive tax cuts for the rich and devastating cuts to Medicaid and other critical programs.
"Speaker Mike Johnson said he'll be working Saturday and through Sunday's Super Bowl taking place in New Orleans—in his and Majority Leader Steve Scalise's home state of Louisiana," Roll Callreported Thursday. "Trump, who hosted House GOP leaders for several hours to discuss reconciliation earlier in the day, is slated to attend the game Sunday."
Musk and his cronies, meanwhile, have set their sights on the Social Security Administration amid mounting legal challenges to their infiltration of federal departments and access to critical data and payment systems.
Sarah Dohl, chief campaigns officer for the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, warned in the wake of Vought's confirmation vote Thursday that "Senate Republicans just handed the power to slash essential programs—like school lunches for hungry kids, Medicaid that keeps nursing homes open, and food assistance that helps families put dinner on the table—to a man whose entire mission is economic sabotage in service of billionaires like Elon Musk."
"But let's be clear: This fight doesn't end today," said Dohl. "The next wave of extremists—including Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, RFK Jr., and Linda McMahon—must be met with even stronger resistance. No business as usual. No handshakes with extremists. Democrats must use every tool available to delay and defy the Trump-Musk coup. Anything less is complicity."
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