Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

Senate Parliamentarian rules zeroing out CFPB budget cannot be done through reconciliation

According to the parliamentarian, zeroing out the CFPB budget is subject to a filibuster and so requires 60 votes–which the proposal would surely not get. The Senate majority can overrule the parliamentarian, but doing so would diminish the filibuster’s significance and would set a precedent for when Democrats recapture the Senate but lack the 60 […]

Mike Calhoun: Why the Senate should protect funding for the CFPB

In the National Mortgage News (may be behind paywall). Excerpt: Through a law enacted by Congress, the CFPB receives an amount of up to 12% of the Federal Reserve’s inflation adjusted profits in 2009. This new Senate plan would reduce that amount to 0%, completely cutting off money the agency’s dedicated workers used to hold financial […]

Buy Now, Pay Later’s Perverse Incentives

Buy Now, Pay Later transactions (BNPL) are increasing dramatically. And for some folks, they are probably positive. But for others, BNPL can create significant problems. In case you don’t already know, the typical BNPL transaction enables consumers to purchase something by making four equal payments, one on the date of the purchase and the other […]

CFPB’s enforcement head says the administration has “no intention to enforce the law in any meaningful way.”

So reports Kate Berry in an American Banker article, CFPB’s top enforcement official, Cara Petersen, resigns. Berry writes: “It has been devastating to see the Bureau’s enforcement function being dismantled through thoughtless reductions in staff, inexplicable dismissals of cases, and terminations of negotiated settlements that let wrongdoers off the hook,” Petersen wrote in an email, […]

Loyola Consumer Law Review seeks speakers, papers for its March 2026 symposium

We received the following call for papers and speakers: The Loyola Consumer Law Review is currently seeking authors and speakers for its upcoming March 2026 symposium, on the state of consumer protection in the United States during the second Trump administration. Scholars could explore how consumers have and will continue to be impacted by the […]

Why does the administration see the FTC’s consumer protection efforts as ok but not the CFPB’s?

I hope some reporter will ask that question of someone in the Trump administration but I’m not sure who the person to ask would be. OMB Director and CFPB Interim Director Russell Vought? We have written at length about the administration’s attempts to shutter and shatter the CFPB. The FTC has certainly taken some hits, […]