Planned 1,500 Layoffs Would Prevent Agency from Protecting Americans, Including Service Members, from Scams
Washington, D.C. — On Thursday, Fox Business reported that the Trump administration was moving forward with plans to cut more than 1,500 people from the CFPB’s workforce out of approximately 1,700 remaining people. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s Brian Schwartz also reported that the administration plans to drastically scale back the CFPB’s supervisory responsibilities while supposedly shifting to other priorities, like service members and veterans, that a gutted CFPB would not be able to meaningfully address with a threadbare workforce. Demand Progress Education Fund has long been a champion of the CFPB’s work to protect Americans from financial predators and scammers.
The following is a statement from Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at Demand Progress Education Fund:
“Yesterday, Trump officials claimed they wanted the CFPB to protect our military service members and veterans from financial scams. Today, they announced sweeping job cuts that will prevent that from happening. Don’t pay attention to what they say about the CFPB, pay attention to what they’re doing. And what they’re doing is systematically gutting all efforts to protect service members, and all Americans, from fraud and scams while simultaneously letting Wall Street, Big Banks and Big Tech off the hook. The CFPB has heard hundreds of thousands of complaints from service members, veterans and their families and has returned nearly more than $180 million back to those communities. If the administration actually cared about them, they wouldn’t have fired most of the people responsible for protecting them.”