WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Trump-led Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Acting Director Russ Vought are moving to illegally lay off nearly 1,500 of the 1,700 employees left at the CFPB. This news follows an internal memo dated April 16, in which CFPB leadership announced their intent to significantly scale back the Bureau’s work, including abandoning supervision exams, enforcement, penalizing lawbreaking conduct, and “deprioritizing” numerous critical consumer protection issues like student loans, fair lending and medical debt.

The Consumer Federation of America released the following statement in response to the announcement:

“Sabotaging the CFPB by firing almost 90% of its remaining civil servants who protect Americans from corporate crime is hardly the ‘individualized’ or ‘particularized’ assessment that the court required the CFPB to undergo,” said Erin Witte, director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America. “These mass layoffs combined with the April 16 memo provide a blueprint for would-be cheats and lawbreakers about which laws they can violate without being held accountable by our nation’s supposed consumer finance ‘watchdog.’”

“Ordering a reduction in force order contradicts the views of Americans who have repeatedly expressed strong bipartisan support for financial protection and the CFPB,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America. “We have a CFPB because excessive risk-taking by corporations caused millions of people to lose their homes, businesses, and life savings. By saving people $21 billion since the CFPB’s inception, the dedicated staff at the agency have demonstrated the value they bring. They deserve respect – not to be subject to extremist attacks on their livelihoods inspired by the whims of billionaires. The only winners here are predatory lenders, surveillance Big Tech firms, fraudsters, and financial institutions that want to profit at our expense.”