The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act has many notable and historic wins such as tax cuts, welfare reform, and supercharging energy policy. The bill also contains dozens of additional policy victories that conservatives might not have heard about.
Among the provisions worth celebrating is reducing the budgetary resources of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Then-Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren conceptualized the finance-focused regulator in 2007. Congress authorized the CFPB’s creation in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.
The CFPB is a perfect example of what’s wrong with Washington. It is duplicative of a dozen other federal regulators, along with state government safeguards for consumers.
The agency is funded through a strange autopilot formula, drawing resources from the Federal Reserve rather than regular appropriations. This shields the CFPB from necessary oversight and accountability that comes from Congress’s power of the purse.
Worst of all, the CFPB has exceeded its delegated authority in pursuit of excessive power over the economy. Congress has been forced to use the Congressional Review Act four times to overturn problematic regulations from the bureau, including twice in 2025. The bureau has also been prone to embracing leftist ideological fads such as “disparate impact” theory to justify regulatory overreach.
Thankfully, the CFPB will now have to make do with fewer tax dollars.
Section 30001 of the OBBB reduces the CFPB’s funding formula from 12% to 6.5% of the Federal Reserve’s inflation-adjusted “profits” from 2009. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this will reduce spending by $2 billion over the next decade. This welcome reform will still afford more than sufficient budgetary resources for the CFPB.
However, legislators should go further. There are many possibilities, including:
- Eliminating the CFPB altogether. This could take many forms, from downsizing and merging it into another regulatory agency to straightforward removal.
- Further adjusting the funding formula for greater savings. Section 50003 of the House-passed OBBB was estimated to save nearly $4 billion by lowering the funding percentage from 12% to 5% and capping unobligated balances.
Congress took a step towards draining the swamp by reducing the budgetary resources available to the CFPB in the OBBB. Should they decide to produce additional reconciliation legislation, additional action on the CFPB should be on their radar.
