Democrats who get their information from television news are convinced that closing the CFPB is a bad thing. Just because it’s called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doesn’t mean that consumers actually benefit from it. Elizabeth Warren deserves credit for creating a slush fund which, so far, has resisted all attempts at destruction. President Donald Trump appears to be on the verge of driving a stake through its heart. This will be his second stab at that job. The first time, it survived.
CFPB frozen solid
The first step to eliminate the slush fund Democrats affectionately call the CFPB is to freeze it solid. That was done Saturday night, February 8.
As soon as Russell Vought was appointed acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he sent around an email. It ordered “all employees” to stop everything and await further instructions.
“Effective immediately,” Vought instructed, all “employees, contractors and other personnel of the bureau shall cease all supervision and examination activity.”
Progressives are howling in horror and demanding lawyers start filing lawsuits to do something about it. Naive liberals actually believe that the CFPB benefits consumers.
The way CNN slants it, they want you to believe that “the nation’s top consumer financial watchdog has effectively been pulled off the street.”
What they don’t tell you is that all the money CFPB shakes down from “big banks, payday lenders and other financial institutions” sits in their own bank account. Until those controlling it decide someone friendly to their interests needs money. It gets doled out to their cronies by the millions, right under the nose of congress.
Pennies for the peasants
When Democrat Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren set up her slushy scheme, she knew that some money would need to flow to consumers in order to justify the bureau’s existence.
Set up like a class action settlement fund, affected consumers are delighted to get a small check out of the clear blue sky. Getting even $20 bucks back with CFPB on the logo builds a lot of consumer good will. They don’t realize that another $20 million or so could have been split into the pot that wasn’t.
Democrats saw it as a way to rake as much as they wanted off the top of the “$18 trillion in consumer debt” they monitor. That money sits there until they need it to fund a project of their own.
Then, the CFPB director quietly writes a check and another $20 million goes out the door to elites who vote Democrat.
Trump’s new director revealed the current balance in the slush fund with a post on social media. He tapped out that he “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.”
He also noted that right this minute, CFPB had an “excessive” balance of $711.6 million. Money which could have gone to consumers, but hasn’t.
