OPINION:
It’s a “new day in America” as federal agencies and their employees are on notice that bloated government waste and abusive or inept bureaucrats are on the chopping block.
On Capitol Hill, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have outlined their plans for their new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, to reduce our federal workforce by 75% and cut $2 trillion in federal spending as they advise President-elect Donald Trump on ways to shrink or eliminate inefficient agencies.
Every federal employee will answer an essential question: What exactly do you do here?
Many of us have a legitimate sense of optimism that Mr. Trump will deliver on his promise to rein in government waste, and many in Congress are eager to get started.
Last month, Sen. Joni Ernst sent a letter to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy identifying approximately $1 trillion in potential federal spending cuts, and the Iowa Republican plans to head the Senate’s newly formed DOGE Caucus, which includes GOP Sens. John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Roger Marshall and James Lankford. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, will chair a House subcommittee focused on eliminating government waste.
One federal agency is the quintessential poster child for government waste and abuse. While many people have never even heard of it, many of us, including Mr. Musk, hope Mr. Trump will gut it or eliminate it altogether. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, may have a fancy name that suggests it is there to protect Americans, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The CFPB performs essentially the same function as the Federal Trade Commission, albeit with far less oversight or accountability, and reports more than $428 million spent on annual salaries and benefits for 1,600 employees. In 2023, the CFPB’s total net cost of operations ballooned to over $2.7 billion, constituting a staggering 166% increase from the year prior.
This past year, the CFPB has spent resources and manpower prosecuting one of the most frivolous and politically motivated civil cases in history, which remains pending in the Western District of New York against Strategic Financial Solutions (CFPB et al. v. StratFS, LLC et al., Case No. 1:24-cv-40).
The CFPB and seven state attorneys general filed a lawsuit last January under seal against numerous individuals and corporate defendants, and they sought ex parte relief, which meant the defendants had no notice and no opportunity to be heard.
The next day, the federal judge rubber-stamped the complaint and 3,000 pages of filings — including a temporary restraining order that froze the defendants’ assets and served to destroy their business. Within another 24 hours, federal and state law enforcement agents raided the defendants’ offices, pulled the computer plugs, sent 900 employees home and froze hundreds of bank accounts, including an account that belonged to the teenage son of one of the defendants.
At this point, you may be asking: What is the crime that these defendants are being charged with? A crime? No one said anything about a crime. This is a civil action in which the CFPB calls the business structure improper — based only on an alleged technicality and the government’s own interpretation of a regulation — despite the company’s 10-plus-year history. Hundreds of thousands of their customers, often working-class people with nowhere else to turn, faced crippling, high-interest credit card debt.
Instead of giving the company a chance to rectify any alleged regulatory violation, the CFPB seems intent on something else: punishing and destroying.
Even worse, in the 11 months of these egregious actions by the CFPB, the defendants have been forced to seek permission to buy groceries and pay their mortgages. Their businesses were taken from them without due process. While the defendants appealed the district court’s decision earlier this year, it remains pending with no argument date scheduled and attempts denied to stay the underlying case. The defendants’ assets remain frozen.
Interestingly, in 2017, Kathy Hochul, then lieutenant governor of New York, gave a supportive speech at the company ribbon-cutting ceremony. Before that, Dennis Vacco, the former New York attorney general, had been hired to examine the company and give legal opinions as to whether the operations were in compliance with the law and applicable regulations. Mr. Vacco’s conclusion regarding the company was that there were no violations. Legal. In compliance. All good.
Instead of commonsense investigations, many Democratic lawyers in the CFPB had an ax to grind and a desire to declare a political victory over a couple of words in federal regulation.
Too many federal bureaucrats have spent decades hiding behind their desks and their self-proclaimed power. The resulting waste has continued to grow unchecked, and I look forward to Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk, Mr. Ramaswamy, Ms. Ernst and Ms. Greene picking this low-hanging fruit of the government tree.
An easy fix is to shut down the CFPB, which is overrun by bureaucrats who favor red tape and the insidious targeting of hardworking Americans over common sense and accountability.
• Brett Tolman is a former U.S. attorney for the District of Utah and the executive director of Right on Crime.
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