Even for Donald Trump this is insane
Perhaps the drive to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau isn’t clear to a billionaire. He can afford to pay whatever an entity wants to charge him, and he doesn’t give it second thought. In his zeal to close down CFPB, Musk nor Trump have any idea how much that agency has saved Americans from unnecessary or fraudulent charges, nor do they care, or Musk wouldn’t be so glib about it. Judge Amy Berman stepped in and stopped them from immediately going in to raid the department, but it’s only temporary.
Trump fired the director of CFPB, Rohit Chopra, so that he could install one of his Project 2025 lackies, Russell Vought. Vought is considered “the architect” of Project 2025. Funny, Trump denied vociferously that he had anything whatsoever to do with Project 2025. Why is it, then, that you can apply for a job in the Trump administration through the Project 2025 site? Musk posted “CFPB RIP.” Why is this agency a waste? It’s not to people who were part of the $17.5 billion CFPB put back in consumers’ pockets. Corporations are, of course, happy to see the CFPB go. They have criticized it since its inception. That alone tells you they were profiting off the backs of American consumers.
Vought posted on X that the agency’s funding “was excessive” and added: “This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability is now being turned off.” Trump, Vought, and the rest of them should know unaccountability. That’s what DOGE is all about. According to USA Today, Fed chair Jerome Powell disagrees. He testified that “no other federal regulator” exists that can hold big banks accountable. He’ll probably be the next to be fired. It is obvious that Trump, Musk, and Vought care nothing about the wellbeing of the citizens of this country, and they want to shut down everything that Congress put in place to protect us. USA Today included a list of things the CFPB has accomplished: late fees were capped at $8 rather than $32; bank overdraft fees were capped at $5 instead of $25; and they banned the inclusion of medical bills on credit reports so that medical debts wouldn’t count against people.
Republicans are all in this together. They recently introduced legislation to overturn the $5 cap on overdraft fees. Why, might you ask? According to them, “higher fees promote financial discipline and responsibility.” Regular, everyday people get into financial binds. Even as they try to get out, being hit with high fees does not help. In fact, it keeps them in debt as they juggle money to pay their bills. We’re not millionaires like them. Life sometimes gets in the way of keeping bills current. Millionaires obviously don’t have that problem, yet they want to treat the rest of us like we are their financial equals even though they know it’s not true. It is truly amazing how these people are operating. They have zero care or concern for the people who elected them to office. In the next round of voting, it would behoove people to think about that before choosing.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years