Democrats preview tough oversight of CFPB post midterms
- Key insight: Russell Vought, who is acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said he believes the bureau shouldn’t exist in its current form.
- Forward look: House Democrats can wield a number of tools if they retake the lower chamber in November. The House Financial Services Committee is one of few panels with subpoena power.
- What’s at stake: The CFPB is a longtime political punching bag for Republicans, and one that banks have also complained about for years, although it has the power to oversee growing nonbank competitors to already-established banks.
WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers signaled what the House Financial Services Committee could look like in the next year when it comes to oversight of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
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In a House Financial Services Committee
“Let me be clear, we’re not done with you,” Waters said.
The motion was voted down 24-13, but it previews at least one tool the powerful House Financial Services Committee has to oversee agencies under its purview.
“Instead of being proud of your work, you’ve been hiding while unlawfully trying and thankfully failing to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Waters said. “I’ve never delighted in someone’s failure as much as I’ve delighted in yours.”
Vought, at the helm of the CFPB, has led the agency through massive attempts to scale back both the number of employees at the bureau and its scope in overseeing financial institutions. It’s been the subject of long-running litigation, and is part of Republicans’ long-term goals to take apart the consumer protection agency.
Vought is also famously the architect of much of the Trump administration’s most controversial actions, including firing large parts of the federal government and politicizing its civil-service bureaucracy. He was a main author of Project 2025, and spends most of his time heading up the Office of Management and Budget.
This is the first time Vought has appeared in Congress for what is statutorily supposed to be twice-yearly testimony for the head of the bureau. He spent much of his time in the hearing room outlining his conservative vision for the federal government, including the CFPB.
He said that under its previous leadership, the CFPB overstepped its authority, and that in the future, Congress should put the bureau under its appropriations process, rather than the funding mechanism that was written into law in Dodd-Frank, and that the Supreme Court has found constitutional.
“Though we have improved a great deal about how to operate, the bureau remains structurally defective, and I do not believe it should exist in its current form,” Vought said.
Republicans have tried for years to get the agency funded through appropriations. It will, to a certain extent, be so in the future. In the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last year, the Senate parliamentarian agreed to let Republicans
“I do not understand why Congress would ever provide funding to an agency outside of appropriations,” Vought said, adding that “it has led to, I think, a cavalier attitude and a swagger on behalf of the CFPB. That is ultimately what we’ve been trying to wind down.”
The extent to which the Trump administration’s actions at the CFPB affect the bureau’s long-term future remain to be seen. A federal judge has stopped and slowed some of the Trump administration’s changes, and told the White House that it can’t dismantle the bureau entirely.
Brian Johnson, the new pick to lead the agency,is a more traditional choice, and has deep experience as a financial policy maker. He previously worked at the bureau as a senior advisor during Trump’s first term, and has been legal counsel to the House Financial Services Committee under Jeb Hensarling.
He currently awaits a Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing date.
