U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) led a group of 40 Democratic senators who are seeking answers on how the Trump administration plans to fulfill the mandates of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
In a letter to Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought, the Senate Democrats outlined more than 80 congressionally mandated functions of the CFPB. They also pressed for answers on how the agency would be able to fulfill them after firing almost the entire staff.
“On April 17, you tried to fire nearly all of the agency’s remaining 1,700 employees—the staff responsible for fulfilling the CFPB’s mission and statutory requirements to prevent Americans from getting scammed by big banks and giant corporations. Your hasty and unjustified mass firings are an illegal shutdown of the CFPB that will leave it unable to conduct agency actions that are required by law,” the letter stated.
The senators laid out the impact the mass layoffs would have on specific functions of the CFPB––including firing all but one employee helping victims of scams in the offices focused on two million servicemembers and tens of millions of older Americans.
“You directed the gutting of entire divisions—including departments created by Congress to protect servicemembers and older Americans—attempting to leave a shell of only 200 employees to supervise and examine large financial institutions across the country, respond to millions of consumer complaints, answer the phone for hundreds of thousands of people seeking help, monitor emergency financial risks, and run all of the agency’s other operations,” the letter continued.
The senators are seeking a detailed accounting of each of the more than 80 statutory obligations of the CFPB. They are also requesting information on the number of employees assigned to each of those functions as of December 2024, the number of employees who would be assigned to each function if the reduction in force were to go into effect, the immediate impact of such a reduction on the agency’s ability to perform each function consistent with federal law and federal court orders, and copies of any individualized or particularized analysis of those planned reductions on the agency’s work. They are seeking a response by May 7.
Also, legislative watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investigating the Trump Administration’s actions to dismantle the agency, including attempted firings, stop-work orders, and recent announcements of dropped lawsuits to hold corporations responsible. Further, the GAO will investigate whether the CFPB is able to fulfill its congressionally mandated functions.