Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following statement following Donald Trump’s nomination of Stuart Levenbach—a marine ecology scientist and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official— to serve as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), along with agency statements suggesting this nomination is intended as a maneuver to allow OMB Director and CFPB Acting Director Russ Vought to continue his unlawful efforts to shut down the agency.

“As they’ve already admitted, Trump’s nomination of Stuart Levenbach is nothing more than a scheme to prolong Russ Vought’s control over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without needing Senate confirmation – another part of their master plan to gut the agency entirely and avoid having to answer to Congress or the American people for it. This maneuver comes after nearly a year of dodging a series of letters from me and many other Members of Congress as well as ignoring the CFPB’s statutory mandates to report and testify before Congress every six months.

This latest move also comes just days after the Trump Administration advanced a radical, baseless legal theory to claim the CFPB is unable to obtain more funds from the Federal Reserve as a means to defund the CFPB – an argument so extreme that multiple federal judges have rejected it, and even the Republican attorney general in Texas refuses to support it. Furthermore, Vought continues to advance harmful proposals that will hurt consumers and small businesses, such as a new attempt to drastically limit small business loan data collection that will leave the market opaque and less competitive and drive up borrowing costs for small businesses.

Instead of focusing on lowering costs for hardworking American families and addressing the worsening affordability crisis, Trump and Vought are actively contributing to it. By empowering scammers, payday lenders, and other bad actors who routinely rip off consumers, Trump and Vought are taking money out of Americans’ wallets. Committee Democrats and I will continue to push back against their radical attempts to dismantle consumer protections and undermine Congress’ authority.”

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