Cutting the consumer watchdog keeps billions from Americans

Every year, Americans lose billions to unfair financial practices. For Debra, that abstract number became a shocking reality with an alert for nearly $2,000 in unauthorized charges. She immediately contacted her credit card company, like you’re supposed to. Months went by before she got another shock: The company was holding her responsible. She reached out again, but their fraud department seemed uninterested, adversarial and focused on passing blame.

That’s when Debra asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to join the fight, filing a claim with the agency. In about one day, the CFPB had stepped in. In about one week, the company dropped the charges from her bill.

Millions of people have been helped by the CFPB, the government partner for consumers navigating the financial marketplace. Despite that vital role, we’ve seen several recent acts to gut the agency. With its mission helping so many, our leaders must stand up for this critical consumer watchdog.

The CFPB is a small agency with a big mission: cracking down on scammers, keeping banks and lenders from cheating you and making sure the rules of our financial world work for consumers, not against us.

Since its start, the agency has handled over 4 million complaints and gotten more than $21 billion back to Americans — over a billion dollars a year. That’s likely one reason it's so popular across the political spectrum: A survey from the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending and Americans for Financial Reform shows that over 80% of voters strongly or somewhat favor the CFPB’s mission, including 77% of Republicans.

Despite that popularity, some members of Congress have introduced bills to undermine its independence and consumer work — and even defund it. And some White House officials have ordered a halt to practically all of the agency’s efforts, promised dramatic funding cuts and systemically fired many of its staff.

These combined attacks will likely prevent the CFPB from finishing the important work it started, from keeping your credit score from crashing because you became deathly ill to stopping data brokers from selling your Social Security number and other personal data.

These attacks also undermine a number of ways the agency is trying to put money into people’s pockets:

Limiting fees. For example, the CFPB started restricting multiple fees that financial institutions place on us. Its bank overdraft rule caps fees at $5. Some congressional leaders are threatening to overturn that, even though it would save consumers about $5 billion a year. Another protection limits credit card late fees to $8 dollars a month, saving people an estimated $10 billion a year. A 2023 Consumer Reports nationally representative survey of U.S. adults shows that more than 80% support lowering these late fees. But the administration’s actions suggest they won’t defend the rule from banking groups attacking it.

Guardrails for new products. Over the last few years, new tech products like "buy now, pay later" services have developed to help Americans pay for things. But guardrails haven't kept up with innovation. The CFPB had begun creating protections, but in threatening its budget, the White House seems ready to dismiss this work. Consumers will lose millions without recourse, whether to companies overcharging or scammers taking advantage.

Penalizing companies for taking advantage of people. Earlier this year, the CFPB had more than two dozen active enforcement cases against companies mistreating consumers. For example, one lawsuit accused Capital One of the bank misleading customers about the interest rates they would receive in their savings accounts. These cases had at least $3 billion in reimbursements on the line. Those billions will now likely never get to consumers, as the administration is already dropping enforcement of multiple lawsuits, including the one against Capital One. 

But it’s not too late to take action. President Trump promised to lift up working and middle-class families. The CFPB is an agency that costs a fraction of what it gives back to Americans. We urge him to reconsider the administration’s recent decisions, as undercutting this important agency only hurts Americans who, as the president argued, need more financial relief, not less.

But if we want leaders to listen, we need to speak up now. That’s why Consumer Reports is asking everyone to join our call to action, urging Congress to abandon its attacks on the CFPB and defend its consumer-driven mission.

Debra and her husband know what would have happened without the CFPB. “We’d still be fighting” — against the unfair charges, the risk to their credit and a company that didn’t seem to care.

Without this agency, millions of Americans will face similar fights — and millions will lose. That’s why we must act: speaking out for our financial wellbeing, calling on leaders to stand up for us and demanding they step up for this loyal watchdog.

Because the CFPB isn’t some government waste. It’s government at some of its highest worth — standing by our side in every financial fight.