Consumer Watchdog Agency Endangered

An article appeared in yesterday’s New York Times print edition with details on how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created in 2011 by Congress in the aftermath of the housing crisis of the Great Recession, is being systematically attacked and dismantled. (For the NYT article by Stacy Cowley, click here.)

A friend and subscriber send me a note to “join in taking personal action in support of reversing the potential elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” Yes, Jim D., consider it done. Below is more background information and my plan on how to combat the illegal and unconstitutional actions of Donald Trump and his team.

In the past few days, the CFPB Director was fired, Elon Musk posted “CFPB RIP”, bureau employees were locked out of their offices, and the Project 2025 author and new Office of Management and Budget head, Russell Vought, gave unvetted DOGE employees access to CFPB data systems containing highly sensitive consumer and business information.

The National Consumer Law Center, a leading consumer advocacy group, supplies the following:

Financial companies have shown time and time again that they cannot police themselves. The Administration is trying to shut down an agency created by Congress to fix problems that caused over eight million people to lose their jobs and almost four million families to lose their homes during the Great Recession. The CFPB saves homes, stops fraud that ruins lives, and enforces key laws, winning $21 billion in relief for over 200 million people harmed by credit bureaus, big banks, debt collectors and predatory lenders.

The illegal actions to shut down the CFPB halt work to safeguard people’s private information, protect bank customers when hackers raid their accounts, and help families save their homes when they’re unfairly rushed to foreclosure. The CFPB now appears poised to roll over and play dead in pending lawsuits by big banks and credit bureaus, letting them overturn new rules returning $5 billion in excessive overdraft fees to struggling families and removing medical debt from credit reports.” NCLC has joined with Democracy Forward to move to intervene in the overdraft fee litigation, and we are working to preserve the medical debt rule.

The plan I propose includes the following:

• Attend rallies. There is strength in numbers and you will feel part of a community.
• Phone and email your elected officials, now. There is a list on this website of New Jersey and Pennsylvania Senators and Representative, here. For Members of Congress in the other 48 states visit https://www.congress.gov/members.
• Contribute to organizations that support our rights and freedoms. My featured organization today is the National Consumer Law Project, a group I’ve been associated with for twenty-five years.
• Join national, state, and particularly local political groups. My current favorites are: Indivisible, Indivisible Philadelphia, Mt. Airy Democrats, Turn PA Blue, and Vote the Ridge to name just a few.
• Vote every election, twice a year.
• Do something.