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Key Points
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren's report, shared first with CNBC, says scrapping CFPB limits on credit card late fees and overdraft charges accounts for $22.5 billion of the estimated $26.5 billion in consumer costs.
- The remaining roughly $4 billion stems from dropped enforcement actions and abandoned settlements that Democrats say would have provided consumer relief.
- The report comes as lawmakers question acting Director Russell Vought over the agency's overhaul and consider President Donald Trump's nomination of Capital One executive Brian Johnson to lead the bureau permanently.
President Donald Trump (L) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Reuters | Getty Images
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Thursday that the Trump administration's overhaul of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has cost Americans up to $26.5 billion so far, the latest Democratic critique of sweeping changes made to the agency.
In a report shared first with CNBC, Warren said most of that figure comes from moves the CFPB has taken under acting Director Russell Vought to roll back rules capping credit card and overdraft fees.
The report comes as Vought faces a Senate oversight hearing Thursday on those and other actions, including dismissing enforcement actions and consent orders and an allegation that the agency recently removed 15 years of consumer data from the CFPB website.
Since taking office last year, the Trump administration has slashed staffing, dropped or narrowed dozens of enforcement cases, and rolled back Biden-era rules to refocus the agency on what officials call its core mission.
Republicans have defended the moves as necessary to rein in what they view as an overreaching regulator. Democrats led by Warren — who conceived and helped set up the agency after the 2008 financial crisis — have contended that the Trump administration has crippled a key consumer financial watchdog and exposed Americans to unfair or deceptive industry practices.
The clash comes as the Senate weighs the nomination of Brian Johnson, a former CFPB deputy director turned Capital One executive, whom President Donald Trump tapped to lead the agency permanently.
Warren's report attributes up to $15 billion in consumer costs to the CFPB's decision to abandon a rule capping most credit card late fees at $8, a regulation the agency previously estimated would save consumers roughly $10 billion annually.
It attributes another $7.5 billion to the repeal of the bureau's overdraft fee rule, which would have limited many banks to charging $5 for overdrafts.
The remainder of the estimate comes from the CFPB's decision to drop more than three dozen enforcement actions and settlements, some of which were set to send payments directly to consumers. That totaled roughly $4 billion, according to the report.
The White House and CFPB did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ahead of Thursday's hearing, Warren also sent Vought a letter cataloging what she described as unanswered congressional oversight requests during his tenure running the bureau.
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