Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were instructed to cease all of their operations and all stakeholder engagement effective immediately after receiving an email from the director of the Office of the Management and Budget, Russell Vought, on Saturday evening. Russell Vought was also named to lead the Office of Management and Budget, and now he has been named the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In an email to the staff of the bureau, Vought said, “As acting director, I am committed to implementing the president’s policies, consistent with the law, and acting as a faithful steward of the bureau’s resources.”
The agency was created by Congress in 2011 to watch the finance sector of the country like banks. The agency cannot be shut down without Congressional action, but the director of the agency has the power to halt most of its actions by enforcing or weakening its regulations and softening its supervision over the financial institutions in the country, like banks and other lenders.
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Vought is one of the authors of Project 2025, an initiative by the conversationalist to reform the federal structure of the country, and this is yet another step towards the fulfilment of the project. Russell also wrote on an X post that he had notified the Federal Reserve that the finance bureau “will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties.”
He also said, “The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off.”
