John,

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is facing one of its most dangerous attacks yet. Today, the House Financial Services Committee will vote on a budget bill that seeks to destroy the CFPB.

The Trump administration―aided by Elon Musk―has slashed 90% of CFPB’s workforce¹ and is using the budget process to cut CFPB’s funding by 70-80% by changing how the agency is funded.

The CFPB’s unique funding structure was created specifically so that Wall Street’s lobbyists couldn’t hamstring it by working with their friends in Congress to cut its budget.

Under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB draws its funding from the Federal Reserve, rather than through annual congressional appropriations. Removing this structure would spell the end of the agency as we know it because the financial services lobby would use all its resources to gut its funding.

We cannot allow Trump’s attacks to destroy this agency, which is meant to protect everyday people from greedy, predatory businesses.

Send a message to Congress telling them to save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The CFPB was created in response to one of the worst financial crises this country has ever faced. The 2008 Wall Street crash devastated college savings, retirement and pension accounts, and we saw hundreds of thousands of homes being foreclosed. We should not bring back the same deregulatory policies that led to the Great Recession and wiped away $15 trillion in net worth.

For more than a decade, the CFPB has shielded American consumers from financial abuse, recovering more than $1,488,823,618 in penalties from crooked executives and companies that deceived and cheated consumers.²

If the CFPB is destroyed, banks will be able to double down on fee hikes, discriminate against Black and Brown communities, and target vulnerable consumers with abusive loans. Abusive credit card fees will proliferate, while Wall Street executives rake in record profits.

This is exactly what Wall Street and Musk’s billionaire allies want. They couldn’t kill the CFPB outright, so now they want to starve it from the inside, cutting off enforcement and rolling back consumer protections.

We must put the pressure on Congress to protect America’s greatest consumer watchdog.

Congress needs to hear from you now. Send a message urging them to protect the CFPB.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, CHN Action

¹ New Details Emerge on Trump Officials’ Sprint to Gut Consumer Bureau Staff
² CFPB Civil Penalty Fund