Days after sacking the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Donald Trump has appointed Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to temporarily head the bureau.
The back-to-back actions come as some Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to defund the CFPB entirely, with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, calling it “an unelected, unaccountable bureaucratic agency that has imposed burdensome and harmful regulations.”
The bureau, created in 2010 under the Obama administration as a response to the 2008 financial crisis, has been targeted by Republicans since its inception.
The bureau is tasked with handling deceptive and fraudulent business practices and maintaining a fair marketplace, but many lawmakers and businesses have accused it of overstepping its bounds.
In January, then-director of the CFPB Rohit Chopra finalized a rule that would remove an estimated $49 billion in medical bills from the credit reports of about 15 million Americans and prevent lenders from using medical information in lending decisions.
The decision quickly prompted lawsuits from credit unions and evoked heightened criticism from Republicans, many of whom are now celebrating Trump’s decision to make Bessent acting director of the CFPB.
“Former Director Chopra’s repeated regulatory overreach wreaked havoc on our financial system to the detriment of the consumers his agency was created to protect. His removal is a critical step in restoring Americans’ faith in our financial regulators,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., said Monday.
“I look forward to working with Acting Director and Treasury Secretary Bessent to finally rein in this unaccountable agency by putting the CFPB under the appropriations process, making it a bipartisan commission, and providing appropriate statutory guardrails,” Hill added.
But the leadership shakeup and defunding threats have provoked alarm and ire from Democrats.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, who played a key role in the CFPB’s creation, accused the president of harming consumers in favor of big businesses.
“If President Trump is serious about lowering costs and capping credit card interest rates, he needs a strong CFPB and a strong CFPB Director,” Warren said Saturday. “If he and Republicans decide to cower to Wall Street billionaires and try to destroy the agency, they will have a fight on their hands.”
