Elon Musk and his DOGE team have gone through portions of the government like a white tornado, leaving sputtering bureaucrats and furious Democrats in their wake. While the latter group has managed to slow DOGE’s progress by running to friendly judges, that process still takes time, and the public is becoming aware just how much our government wastes on frivolity.

The latest target from last weekend is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), recently taken over by Russell Vought, whom the Senate confirmed as the head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought has been named acting head of CFPB and, as such, ordered its employees not to come into the office this week. He declared that the bureau would put off all new rules, suspend effective dates of final rules already in the process, and cease any investigations. Employees can work remotely, he added, but Vought will be in the office.

He also revealed that the CFPB budget for the remainder of the fiscal year will be $0. “Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act,” he explained, “I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties. The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off.”

Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not “reasonably necessary” to carry out its duties. The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact…

— Russ Vought (@russvought) February 9, 2025

Vought has also taken the CFPB offline. Elon Musk foreshadowed its demise on Friday on his X platform: “CFPB RIP.”

One CFPB employee lamented, “I think everyone assumes this is the USAID playbook, and I think everyone’s operating off of the assumption that we’re about to get annihilated, the way that they were annihilated.”

While DOGE and Vought are dealing with the CFPB from the regulatory side, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Keith Self, both Republicans from Texas, are working on defunding CFPB from the legislative side. “The CFPB has long operated as an unaccountable and burdensome agency that has stifled economic growth through regulatory overreach,” said Self. “By eliminating its funding entirely, we are taking a principled stand for transparency and accountability, while restoring power to the American people and their elected representatives. This bill ensures taxpayers are no longer footing the bill for an agency that operates beyond the scope of constitutional checks and balances.”

Conservatives have always had issues with the CFPB because its funding comes not from Congress but from the Federal Reserve. Democrats intentionally set it up that way to avoid scrutiny, as Justice Samuel Alito noted in his dissent in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America.

As our Nate Jackson summarized last year, “The CFPB effectively operates without oversight. It can legislate, and Congress abdicated its power of the purse. The CFPB is the deep state, and congressional Democrats deliberately designed it that way. Now, it has the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval.”

When Democrats go into a delirious panic over losing their power, we know where the real problem lies. Indeed, they’re still busy trying to justify the CFPB based on all kinds of imagined good it could do without even remotely addressing the fundamental problem with its unaccountable structure.

Defunding the unelected bureaucracy that is the CFPB is a major step in the right direction to extricating more of that power out of their hands. Over the next few weeks, we will see if the CFPB is reined in, neutered, or simply eliminated. In any case, the Washington establishment is taking yet another needed blow from a bullish Trump administration.