Musk Wants to Delete the CFPB to Enrich Himself. It Gives a Green Light to All Corporate Scammers.

In the name of “government efficiency,” Elon Musk has marked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for “deletion,” though there is significant pushback to the outlandish idea that a special government contractor could zero out an agency funded by Congress. Acting CFPB director Russell Vought—a Project 2025 coauthor who has vowed to put federal workers “in trauma”—has ordered the agency to halt all of its work. And several Musk loyalists have reportedly infiltrated the agency’s computer systems and sent out blanket termination emails to dozens of employees. What they’re searching for is unclear, but it likely has nothing to do with efficiency. The CFPB has an exemplary track record as a steward of public resources. Its 2025 budget of $823 million is a fraction of the $20.7 billion it has returned to the American people since its founding by cracking down on corporate fraud and abuse and enforcing consumer protection laws. 

It’s useful to think about this latest attack through the lens of Musk’s personal financial interests. He is reportedly working with Visa to launch his own digital payment system, “X Money,” which would subject his platform to the CFPB’s regulatory oversight. Not coincidentally, Musk’s attempts to destroy the agency come just a few months after it finalized a rule expanding its supervisory authority to include digital payments apps, including these platforms’ handling of consumer data and potential role in attempts to defraud older adults. 

That Musk sees the elimination of an anti-scam agency as central to his project should alarm everyone. But regardless of what Musk thinks he will get away with, gutting the CFPB would open the floodgates for corporations to plunder the public with even greater impunity, using the same tricks and traps that the agency has spent years uncovering and combating. With the watchtowers vacant, we all become targets of corporate predation. 

The CFPB’s vigilance is more necessary than ever to protect our livelihoods from this exploitation. Take for example, its lawsuit against Capital One earlier this year, one of its last actions before President Donald Trump assumed office. According to the suit, Capital One had touted its flagship “360 Savings” account as offering some of the highest interest rates in the country, drawing in millions of account holders. Around the same time, it quietly launched another product—the eerily similar “360 Performance Savings”—that offered 14 times the interest. Customers stuck with the original account unknowingly lost out on an estimated $2 billion in potential earnings. So, the CFPB sued them on the public’s behalf. 

This was far from the biggest or most high-profile alleged scam that the CFPB has uncovered in its brilliant 14-year run as the American people’s small but scrappy consumer watchdog. But the Capital One case demonstrates how vulnerable we continue to be to corporate America’s uncanny ability to take from us in ever more subtle and sophisticated ways. The CFPB not only exposes many of these schemes but also gets our money back when it is illegally taken—some $20 billion since the agency’s creation in 2011 (in the wake of the ultimate scam, the 2008 financial crisis). It has also imposed some $5 billion in civil penalties on violators of consumer protection laws. Consider a random selection of the agency’s actions in recent years: 

• Last year, the CFPB secured a $1.8 billion settlement against Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com, two major players in the credit repair industry that had used illegal fee structures and deceptive advertising to lure consumers. Their false promises of improved credit scores allowed the companies to charge exorbitant upfront fees that violated federal law while failing to deliver the advertised results. This scheme harmed over 4 million consumers, exploiting their financial vulnerabilities and anxieties for profit.
• In December 2022, the CFPB announced a $3.7 billion settlement with Wells Fargo, following revelations of systemic misconduct affecting millions of customers. Among its many abuses, the bank had illegally charged surprise overdraft fees, wrongfully repossessed vehicles, and improperly denied mortgage modifications to consumers. 
• The CFPB is currently engaged in a lawsuit against ACTIVE Network, a company that processes online registrations and payments for events like charity races and youth camps. It exposed ACTIVE Network’s use of manipulative “dark patterns” to enroll millions of consumers into its paid membership program without their consent, costing them over $300 million in unwanted charges. ACTIVE Network accomplished this by allegedly utilizing deceptive design tricks like pre-checked boxes and confusing registration flows. 

These are the sort of scams Musk’s actions will unleash with greater ferocity by delegitimizing or otherwise obstructing the agency’s work. In the Muskian worldview, a business tricking you out of your money is efficient, while the government trying to stop it is not. When he calls for gutting agencies like the CFPB, he’s advocating the removal of the few safeguards that protect people in an economy rife with despotism. As I testified before the Senate Banking Committee last year, a decades-long trend of concentration has liberated our largest corporations from the burden of competing for our business, allowing them to test out truly outrageous tactics—from casino-like pricing experiments to hidden junk fees—to bring in more revenue. The CFPB’s careful watch has been one of the most reliable checks against these practices. 

The attack on the CFPB is also happening within a bigger picture. The Trump administration’s bureaucratic arson in agency after agency can seem like multiple fronts in an overwhelming attack on our democratic institutions. But all of these attacks converge on a single goal: to clear the remaining structures of democracy so that oligarchs like Musk can run freely. Delete the agency auditing their taxes (Internal Revenue Service). Delete the agency preventing them from busting their companies’ unions (National Labor Relations Board). Delete the agency that might prevent their companies from defrauding you (CFPB). And delete the remaining government programs that give working people a fair shot in our economy.