Senate Republicans blocked Senate Democrats on Wednesday from reversing several Trump-era policy changes at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to the Associated Press. The Senate voted down three Democratic resolutions that would have rolled back actions the Democrats said the CFPB adopted after President Donald Trump’s administration took over the bureau in February 2025. The action occurred as Democrats sought to highlight economic pressures in an election year.
The AP report said Democrats framed the resolutions as a way to press for consumer protections that they argued were weakened under Trump-era CFPB changes. It said the Senate rejected the three Democratic resolutions largely along party lines. Democrats also offered more than a dozen other resolutions by voice vote to roll back CFPB policies, but Republicans blocked each one.
Senate Democrats used the voting process under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn certain finalized federal rules, the report said. The AP said Democrats increased their use of the law after it was used sparingly in its first two decades, including during Trump’s first term when a Republican-controlled Congress overturned more than a dozen rules finalized during President Barack Obama’s administration. The report said Democrats, in turn, used the law in 2021 to overturn several Trump-era policies.
In comments during the debate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and a leading defender of the CFPB in Congress, criticized the changes at the bureau. “The Trump Administration is hell-bent on destroying the agency,” Warren said, according to the AP report. Warren also said the bureau changes signal that “the Trump Administration has abandoned consumers and is making life more expensive for them,” the report said.
The AP report said the votes were tied to CFPB rule and regulatory changes since the Trump administration took control of the agency. It said the bureau has rescinded 67 policies under its acting director, Russell Vought, who is also identified in the report as President Trump’s budget director, and that Vought has publicly said his goal is to dismantle the agency. Republicans defended the changes, and the AP said they generally view the CFPB as an agency with too much centralized power and insufficient accountability to Congress.
The AP report included an example involving overdraft fees. Democrats sought to roll back a CFPB policy change on overdraft fees, and the Senate rejected the resolution. The report said the Biden administration in 2024 issued guidance requiring banks to obtain customers’ affirmative consent before charging an overdraft fee, and that guidance was later repealed under President Trump. Democrats argued that the repeal would result in more Americans paying overdraft fees, and the Senate vote on the resolution was 47-53, according to the AP report.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland commented on the overdraft-fee vote, saying: “When they got rid of this rule, it showed that (President Trump) didn’t care about Americans living paycheck to paycheck,” the AP reported. Other Democrats said the CFPB’s direction under Vought amounted to a dismantling of the agency, with Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, saying, “Russell Vought is unilaterally defacing this agency and taking it apart,” according to the report.
The AP report said the votes could create political pressure for certain Republican senators facing reelection, including Susan Collins of Maine, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and John Cornyn of Texas. The report said Collins voted with Democrats on two of the three resolutions even though the Senate ultimately rejected them. It also said the Senate Democrats offered additional resolutions, but Republicans blocked each one.
The AP report said the CFPB was created after the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, with the purpose of functioning as an independent financial regulator with broad enforcement authority over consumer financial products and services. It said the bureau estimated in 2024 that it returned $17.5 billion to American consumers and imposed $4 billion in fines and penalties against financial companies. It added that, since February 2025, the report said the bureau has been largely inoperable, with much of the staff under orders not to work and efforts focused on unwinding prior work.
The report also described how the CFPB’s operating budget was expected to shrink after Trump’s tax and spending cuts law reduced the amount of money the bureau receives from the Federal Reserve. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who the AP report identified as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, defended the CFPB approach, saying, “I can’t think of a worse way to govern than the Biden administration’s approach to the CFPB and the playbook that they used time and time again, putting onerous pressure on small businesses.”
This episode in the Senate follows a broader pattern described in the report: Republicans have sought to diminish the CFPB’s authority since its creation, while Democrats have defended the agency as central to consumer financial protections.