As President-elect Trump prepares to take office, one of his top priorities is to fund tax breaks for wealthy corporations and billionaires by gutting or eliminating critical government programs and services for Americans. To lead the charge, he’s tapped his co-President and the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk. Musk has relentlessly targeted agencies critical to a functioning economy, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), even going as far as calling to “delete CFPB,” which would have disastrous effects for American families and the economy.

With House Republicans and the Trump administration set to go after the CFPB in the coming weeks, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, issued this fact sheet to educate co-President Musk and the American public on why the CFPB is important.

What Does the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Do?

The CFPB is the only federal agency dedicated solely to looking out for our nation’s consumers in the financial marketplace. As America’s consumer financial watchdog, it protects consumers from unfair, deceptive and abusive products and practices that could be offered by a wide range of financial institutions, from our nation’s megabanks to predatory payday lenders. The CFPB was created following the 2008 global financial crisis to address the weak consumer oversight in our nation’s banking system and the vulnerability consumers face when dealing with financial institutions.

Since then, the CFPB has played a crucial role in keeping both our banking system and the broader economy safe and stable. Through numerous enforcement actions, the CFPB has done important work to hold bad-acting financial firms to account. While Musk falsely claims that the agency is part of a problem of “too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” The truth is that there is no other federal agency fighting hard for our nation’s consumers like the CFPB. Since the agency’s inception, the CFPB has returned more than $21 billion back to consumers who have fallen victim to abusive and illegal activity.

CFPB’s success is why more than four out of five Americans support the CFPB, including 77% of Republicans. One of those Republicans is Sheila Bair, the former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair, who pushed back on Musk’s call to delete the CFPB, writing, “Since its creation in 2010, this tiny agency has restored housing market stability, after reckless lending by largely unregulated mortgage brokers brought the U.S. economy to its knees. With a budget of less than $700 million, or about 0.01 percent of the federal budget, the CFPB has been giving Americans good bang for their buck.”

How Does the CFPB Put Money Back into the Pockets of Working-Class Families?

Without the CFPB, hardworking families would have no federal agency solely focused on protecting them from predatory financial firms or to make sure they are compensated after being mercilessly ripped off. Here are a few examples of how the agency has worked to put money back in the pockets of our nation’s working-class families and keep financial institutions in check.

• Cracking down on junk fees, like excessive overdraft fees. The CFPB has ordered institutions like Navy Credit Federal Union, Regions Bank, and Atlantic Union to refund millions of dollars to customers who’ve been harmed by the bank’s illegal surprise overdraft fees. Not only that, last month, the CFPB finalized a rule to generally limit overdraft fees to $5.
  
  
• Holding megabanks accountable for violating the law. The CFPB has not been shy in holding the largest financial institutions accountable for their misdeeds. For example, CFPB ordered Wells Fargo to pay $2 billion to consumers for violations related to consumers losing their vehicles or homes as well as violations related to consumer checking and saving accounts. The CFPB has also gone after Bank of America for repeatedly breaking the law, including but not limited to actions like systematically double-dipping on fees imposed on customers with insufficient funds in their account, withholding reward bonuses explicitly promised to credit card customers, and misappropriating sensitive personal information to open accounts without customer knowledge or authorization.
  
  
• Protecting servicemembers from illegal fees, high-interest loans, and false advertising. This includes firms like Navy Federal Credit Union for charging illegal overdraft fees, NewDay USA for illegally luring veterans and military families into cash-out refinance loans, and many more.
  
  
• Tackling discrimination in housing and the U.S. economy. The CFPB has taken action against companies for discriminatory lending practices and redlining. In 2023, Citibank was found to have intentionally and illegally discriminated against credit card applicants the bank believed to be Armenian American.
  
  
• Protecting students from scams. The CFPB has gone after Navient and other student loan servicers for years of failures and lawbreaking, including deceiving students about the cost of loans and making false claims about graduates’ hiring rates, illegally collected on student loans that had been discharged in bankruptcy and sent false information about consumers to credit reporting companies, and more.
  

What Is Really Happening?

Working-class families have made clear that inflation, the unaffordable cost of housing, and the economy are their top priorities. It’s no wonder why more than four in five Americans support the CFPB, including their work to crack down on junk fees.

In response, President-elect Trump and co-President Musk are targeting the very agencies responsible for helping to maintain a strong economy and protect consumers. For them, it’s not about responding to the needs of working-class families but instead responding to the needs of their wealthy CEO friends who run predatory firms and profit handsomely by ripping off families with impunity. Instead of treating consumers fairly, they just want the CFPB to get out of their way so they can continue exploiting families.

While the campaign to gut the CFPB was met with a major blow after the Supreme Court rejected efforts to defund the agency last year, Wall Street is working in partnership with the incoming administration to find new strategies to further line the pockets of Wall Street executives over our nation’s families. Musk’s call to “delete CFPB” is not just some silly threat, it represents the culmination of a 14-year effort to eliminate the agency and create a new reality in which financial institutions can once again recklessly profit off the backs of hardworking Americans, leaving them with no place to turn to for help and no watchdog to hold these institutions accountable.

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