Musk Wants to Abolish Consumer Agency That Has Been a 'Model of Efficiency'

"This is systemic corruption at a grand and intolerable scale," one advocate said of the billionaire's call to "delete" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.


Jake Johnson
Nov 27, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

President-elect Donald Trump's billionaire appointment to help lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency said Tuesday that he wants to eliminate an agency that one consumer advocate described as "a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, that he wants to "delete" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has returned nearly $20 billion to members of the U.S. public in the form of monetary compensation, canceled debt, and other relief since its creation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

"There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies," Musk declared.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, countered in a statement that the CFPB "was created specifically because none of the overlapping financial regulatory agencies prioritized consumer protection."

"But there's no reason to think facts or evidence have anything to do with Musk's views," said Weissman. "Asking the world's richest person, with a direct interest in a wide range of business lines, to run a project to review the federal government's overall operations is absurd and fundamentally corrupt—and this issue highlights exactly why."

Weissman noted that Musk has "reportedly obtained money transmitter licenses for X in more than three dozen states and still appears determined to turn X into an 'everything app' based around a payment service," an effort that "would be subject to regulation by the CFPB."

"In fact, the CFPB has just finalized a rule to supervise large tech companies offering digital funds transfer and payment wallet apps," he continued. "In short, Musk is calling for elimination of the consumer protection regulator over a business line he seems poised to enter... This is systemic corruption at a grand and intolerable scale."

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) also spoke out in defense of the consumer bureau.

"You want to talk about efficiency? For every $1 spent funding the CFPB, more than $4 have been put back in working people's pockets," the CPC wrote on social media. "It's only 'inefficient' to predatory corporations and billionaires with conflicts of interest."

The CFPB has been a target of Republican lawmakers and their corporate allies since its inception in 2011.

During Trump's first White House term, he attempted to gut the bureau from the inside by installing an opponent of the agency, Mick Mulvaney, to lead it. Mulvaney later backed a failed effort to challenge the constitutionality of the CFPB's funding structure.


But the CFPB has been active in defending consumers and combating corporate abuses under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, a consumer champion picked by President Joe Biden to lead the bureau.

Under Chopra, the American Economic Liberties Project noted in a recent report, "the CFPB has returned billions of Americans' hard-earned money to their bank accounts; fought back against Wall Street and Big Tech's discriminatory and anti-competitive behavior; ensured violating the law can no longer be written off as just a 'cost of doing business'; shuttered corporate scams; and restored financial freedom to millions of Americans held hostage by the credit reporting cartel."

"This is a test for MAGA types and the populist right to see whether they allow themselves to be lied to flagrantly by elites trying to manipulate them."

Musk's call to eliminate the agency came after fellow Trump-supporting billionaire Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist, claimed in an appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast that the CFPB's primary purpose is to "terrorize financial institutions."

Andreessen went on to falsely describe the CFPB as Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) "personal agency that she gets to control" and suggest the bureau is involved in efforts to "debank" people over their political views.

But observers pointed out that Chopra has explicitly condemned politically motivated debanking and worked to prevent companies from unlawfully denying consumers access to financial accounts and services.

"This is a test for MAGA types and the populist right to see whether they allow themselves to be lied to flagrantly by elites trying to manipulate them," Drop Site's Ryan Grim wrote in response to Andreessen's comments. "The CFPB put out a legitimately good rule that went after banks over debanking users based on political views. Yes, a populist left-wing CFPB head stood up for the rights of conservatives."

"Now VCs and Musk, who don't like the CFPB for other reasons, are straight up lying to whip people into a frenzy and defang the CFPB," Grim added. "The message: They think you are stupid and can't read and are going to make your life worse in order to enrich themselves."