The Senate on Wednesday blocked a series of Democratic resolutions aimed at reversing the Trump administration’s sweeping overhaul of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leaving intact policies that have effectively frozen the agency’s operations and rolled back consumer safeguards enacted under President Joe Biden.
The votes were forced under the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that allows Congress to overturn recently finalized federal rules. Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, argued that the CFPB’s policy reversals on overdraft fees, medical debt collection and military lending protections would harm ordinary Americans.
The overdraft fee rule, which required banks to obtain customers’ affirmative consent before charging such fees, was repealed by the Trump administration. The Senate rejected a resolution to reinstate it by a vote of 47–53. “When they got rid of this rule, it showed that (President Trump) didn’t care about Americans living paycheck to paycheck,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
Democrats offered more than a dozen other resolutions by voice vote, but Republicans blocked each one. The maneuver was designed to force vulnerable Republican senators facing reelection — Susan Collins of Maine, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and John Cornyn of Texas — to take recorded votes on consumer issues. Collins voted with Democrats on two of the three recorded resolutions.
The CFPB was created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and has since returned an estimated $17.5 billion to consumers and imposed $4 billion in fines, according to agency data. Under acting director Russell Vought, who also serves as White House budget director, the bureau has rescinded 67 policies and halted most staff work. Vought has publicly stated his goal is to effectively dismantle the agency.
“Russell Vought is unilaterally defacing this agency and taking it apart,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island. Warren called the administration “hell-bent on destroying the agency” and said the changes signal it “has abandoned consumers and is making life more expensive for them.”
Republicans, who have long criticized the CFPB as an unaccountable bureaucracy, defended the administration’s overhaul. “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,” said Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
The bureau’s operating budget is also expected to shrink after the Trump-era tax and spending cuts law reduced the amount of money it receives from the Federal Reserve, further curtailing its capacity.