Turning off 'spigot': White House declines more funding for Consumer Finance Protection Bureau

WASHINGTON – A top White House official announced Saturday he would decline additional funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the agency’s website went dark, possibly signaling another nail in the coffin for the agency Congress created to protect consumers from banks.

Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget who is also acting director of CFPB, said the agency has an “excessive” balance of $711.6 million. Vought notified the Federal Reserve that he wouldn’t take more funding for the agency “because it is not ‘reasonably necessary.’”

“This spigot, long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability, is now being turned off,” Vought said on X.

The announcement came a week after President Donald Trump fired the previous head of the agency, Rohit Chopra.

On Friday, Elon Musk, a top adviser to President Donald Trump as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, posted a message on X that said “CFBP RIP” with an emoji of a tombstone.

About 100 agency workers demonstrated outside its headquarters Saturday, protesting Musk.

Congress created the CFPB in 2010 after the global financial crisis. The agency polices and regulates the consumer finance sector. But Republicans have criticized the agency as being unaccountable and exceeding its legal authority.

Under former President Joe Biden's administration, the agency returned more than $6 billion to consumers while imposing another $3.2 billion in fines, according to the Consumer Federation of America.

Contributing: Reuters

(This article has been updated to correct the name of the CFPB.)