Since its founding, the CFPB has returned more than $21 billion to consumers who were victims of fraud or scams.
Fed chair says no agency outside CFPB tasked with consumer protection
No U.S. regulator other than the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is tasked with ensuring that banks abide by rules guarding against deceptive practices regarding consumers, the head of the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON − Thousands of complaints submitted by Americans to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleging fraud or scams from private companies are going unanswered following President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the agency, Senate Democrats argue in a new report.
Their conclusion is based on publicly available data detailed in an analysis released Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs led by ranking member Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
The CFPB’s Consumer Complaint Program ‒ established in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that created the agency ‒ serves as a clearinghouse for consumers to submit complaints online, by phone or mail about financial products and services. After the CFPB screens the complaints, they are sent to companies for a response.
Since its founding, the CFPB has returned more than $21 billion to consumers who were victims of fraud or scams.Â
During the final three months of former President Joe Biden’s administration, the CFPB uploaded and publicized a daily average of 10,609 complaints received by consumers. During the same period, the CFPB submitted an average of 10,596 complaints to the companies that were named, according to data on the bureau’s website.
But the processing has dropped significantly under Trump.
The agency uploaded a daily average of 7,853 consumer complaints over the 10 days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Feb. 3 ordered the bureau’s staff to stop much of its work. Five days later on Feb. 8, Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and acting director of the bureau, ordered CFPB staff to “cease all supervision and examination activity” and “cease all stakeholder engagement.”
Since Feb. 13 ‒ following mass firings at the CFPB pushed by Vought ‒ the bureau has uploaded just 2,234 complaints a day, according to the report. Historically, the CFPB receives about 350,000 monthly complaints ‒ a pace far greater than the number processed so far this month.
Between Feb. 3 and Feb. 13, the CFPB submitted a daily average of 7,519 complaints to companies. The daily average of complaints submitted to companies has dropped to 2,067 since Feb. 13, a decline of 80% from the pre-Trump rate.
“Consumers in need of help are seeing their complaints go unanswered,” the report says.
Spokespeople for the OMB did not respond to a message from USA TODAY seeking comment.
The report’s release comes ahead of a forum of Democratic senators Warren is convening Tuesday to highlight the consequences of Trump’s efforts to eliminate the CFPB. Top Trump advisor Elon Musk, who has vowed to destroy the bureau through his Department of Government Efficiency, was invited to the forum but is not expected to attend.
Warren, who led the CFPB after it was created during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, requested information Tuesday in a letter to Vought on the number of bureau employees responsible for keeping the complaint database, as well as potential terminations of those involved in the processing of complaints and a tally of the overall complaints the agency has received since its dismantling began.
“With work at the agency effectively halted, it is unclear whether the CFPB still has the staff,financial, technological, and other resources necessary to keep its Consumer Complaint Program operational,” Warren said in the letter co-signed by Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who also sits on the baking committee.
“We are deeply concerned about the implications of your efforts to gut the CFPB onour constituents, who rely on the CFPB and its partner agencies to advocate on their behalf,” the letter says.
The bureau’s biggest enforcement action was in 2022, when it ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion in penalties and restitution for what it said was widespread mismanagement of mortgages and accounts that cost customers their homes and cars and locked people out of their own bank accounts – with more than 16 million consumers affected.
The CFPB, formed to protect consumers against fraud, has long drawn criticism from Republicans and the financial industry. Efforts to dismantle the agency come as the DOGE, led by multibillionaire Musk, has worked aggressively to cut government spending and reduce the federal workforce.
Trump this month said it’s his goal to full eliminate the CFBP, alleging “waste fraud and abuse” in the agency. A federal judge on Feb. 14 ordered the Trump administration to halt the firing of CFPB employees for now until the court takes up a request for a temporary injunction from unions seeking to stop the purge.
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
