By Nandita Bose and Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -White House budget director Russell Vought said on Wednesday he wants to close the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and expects to do so within the next two to three months.
Vought said the agency is not protecting consumers.
“People say consumer financial protection – don’t we want to protect consumers? Absolutely. This agency wasn’t doing it – it had the DNA of Elizabeth Warren,” Vought said on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” referring to the Democratic U.S. senator who was the 14-year-old agency’s key architect.
The CFPB was established to safeguard consumers in the financial services marketplace.
Vought also said he believes the agency is hurting small lenders. The CFPB was established to protect average confsumers in the marketplace for financial services.
“All they want to do is weaponize the tools of financial laws against basically small mom-and-pop lenders and other small financial institutions,” he said.
Since Trump fired former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra in February, the CFPB’s new leadership has twice attempted to cut the vast majority of staff at the agency. Trump and senior administration officials have accused CFPB of politicized enforcement and exceeding its legal authorities.
In court, lawyers for employee unions and consumer advocates have called the restructuring illegal.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
