The Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has cost U.S. consumers an estimated $19 billion in just one year, according to a report released Monday as Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates marked the anniversary of the White House’s takeover of the agency. The findings have intensified scrutiny of how changes to the CFPB’s leadership, funding, and enforcement priorities have translated into lost financial relief for American families.
The report was assembled by Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee and led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a key architect of the CFPB. Drawing on bureau documents, publicly available data, and federal analyses, the report estimates that the Trump administration’s mass dismissal of enforcement actions, failure to distribute settlement payments, rescission of CFPB rules and guidance, and weakening of the Consumer Complaint Program have collectively cost consumers $19 billion over the past year. The report emphasizes that this figure “does not even begin to cover costs Americans could have been scammed out of due to a sidelined CFPB.”
The release of the report coincided with one year since Russell Vought, the White House budget chief and acting CFPB director, ordered the bureau to effectively halt much of its work, including rulemaking and investigations into corporate wrongdoing. Lawmakers have not confirmed Vought as the agency’s permanent director, but he has remained in the acting role through White House legal maneuvers. In recent months, Vought has also attempted to cut off the CFPB’s funding, an effort that has so far been blocked by the courts.
“We want to put it out,” Vought said in an interview late last year. “We will be successful probably within the next two or three months.”
According to the Senate Democrats’ analysis, the $19 billion figure reflects a combination of abandoned consumer protections and enforcement retreats. Prior to President Donald Trump’s second term, the CFPB had returned roughly $21 billion to U.S. consumers who were scammed by banks and other corporations since the bureau’s creation after the Great Recession. Lawmakers say the sharp reversal in enforcement has erased that progress.
One major area of lost relief involves rules governing consumer fees. The CFPB finalized a rule in 2024 limiting overdraft fees, which the bureau estimated would save consumers $5 billion a year. That rule was overturned last year by a Republican-led Congress. Another CFPB effort aimed to cap credit card late fees, a regulation that would have saved Americans roughly $10 billion, according to bureau estimates when the rule was proposed. Although a federal court blocked that rule, the CFPB under Trump administration control chose not to continue fighting the lawsuit.
Enforcement actions have also been curtailed. According to the Associated Press, roughly $4 billion in consumer relief was tied to lawsuits or settlements that were dismissed after Vought assumed control of the bureau. Among them was a lawsuit filed in January 2025 against Capital One seeking $2 billion and alleging that the bank misrepresented the interest rate paid on savings accounts. That lawsuit was dismissed. Another case, filed in December 2024 against Early Warning Systems, the company that operates the Zelle money transfer service, sought $870 million and alleged negligence in protecting consumers from fraud and scams. That lawsuit was also dismissed last year.
The CFPB’s consumer complaint database, once a central tool for resolving disputes between consumers and financial companies, has also been sharply weakened. Under the Biden administration, roughly half of all consumer complaints resulted in relief. Under the Trump administration’s CFPB, that figure has dropped to less than 5 percent.
Warren has argued that the changes contradict Trump’s economic promises. “Donald Trump promised to lower costs for Americans ‘On Day One.’ Instead, he is trying to shut down an agency that protects Americans from getting scammed out of their money by big banks and giant corporations,” Warren said in a statement. “As a result, Trump’s attempt to sideline the CFPB has cost families billions of dollars over the last year alone. We’re going to keep fighting for the CFPB and against the billionaires who want to get rid of it.”
Speaking at a rally in Washington, DC, on Monday, Warren tied the CFPB’s decline to rising financial pressures on households. “When you’re counting the way that costs have gone up for American families over the last year, be sure to include the cost of getting cheated, because Donald Trump has driven that cost through the roof,” she said. Warren also vowed continued resistance to efforts to dismantle the agency. “We are here today to remind Donald Trump and to remind all those Republicans who support him and enable him, to remind every one of them that they can kick this agency, they can try to hold this agency down, they can try to starve this agency, they can try to tie up the people who work at this agency, but at the end of the day, they will not kill this agency,” she said. “We will stay in this fight, and we will win.”
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have defended the changes, arguing that the CFPB had become too large and overreaching. Even so, court battles have slowed some of the most aggressive restructuring efforts. The White House announced in April that it wanted to cut CFPB staffing from 1,689 positions to 207, a move that has been blocked by the courts. Congress has nevertheless reduced the bureau’s budget by roughly half through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, raising doubts about whether the agency can return to full capacity even if ongoing litigation is resolved.
Outside watchdogs have reached similar conclusions to those in the Senate report. Consumer Reports released its own analysis Monday and said it found comparable declines in enforcement and consumer relief. “The CFPB may still be standing, but it’s essentially on life support,” said Chuck Bell, advocacy program director at Consumer Reports, in a statement.
Further concerns were raised in a separate report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office, which examined the Trump administration’s reorganization of the CFPB. The GAO said it received no cooperation from the White House or the bureau and relied primarily on public records to complete its work. In its response, the CFPB cited ongoing litigation between employees and management as the reason it could not cooperate. The GAO’s findings largely mirrored public reporting that the bureau has canceled dozens of enforcement actions and unwound rules intended to protect consumers, including some enacted during Trump’s first term.
Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s chief legal officer and effective deputy director under Vought, dismissed the GAO report as “biased and flawed” in a letter responding to the findings, though he did not identify specific factual errors and argued instead that the GAO had worked with incomplete information.
One year after the Trump administration assumed control of the CFPB, the dispute over the agency’s future continues to sharpen. While administration officials maintain that downsizing was necessary, the Senate Banking Committee report and outside watchdog analyses document what critics say is a tangible financial cost to consumers as the nation’s primary consumer protection agency remains sidelined.
“The CFPB may still be standing, but it’s essentially on life support,” said Chuck Bell, advocacy program director at Consumer Reports, in a statement.
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