DOGE’s Bid to Hobble CFPB Targeted in Government Watchdog Probe

A federal watchdog plans to investigate efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Government Accountability Office plans to begin its investigation into DOGE’s activities at the CFPB “shortly,” according to a letter released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Tuesday.

Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who also sits on the committee, asked for the investigation.

A DOGE team arrived at the CFPB in early February, just before President Donald Trump appointed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to serve as the consumer finance agency’s acting chief. Musk, who’s developing a payments service on his X social media platform, posted “CFPB RIP” soon after DOGE’s arrival.

Since then, the DOGE team and Vought have teamed up to cancel scores of contracts and they made multiple attempts to fire up to 90% of the CFPB’s staff.

The latest effort, a reduction-in-force targeting nearly 1,500 of the agency’s approximately 1,700 employees earlier this month, was put on hold by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Monday.

A hearing in the lawsuit filed by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents most CFPB employees, and other parties is scheduled for May 16.

A major concern in the litigation is how the CFPB will carry out congressionally mandated functions, such as consumer response and supervision of financial institutions, without sufficient staff.

Warren and 39 other Democratic senators sent a letter to Vought inquiring how the CFPB will do what Congress instructed with a skeletal staff, her office announced Tuesday.

“You directed the gutting of entire divisions—including departments created by Congress to protect servicemembers and older Americans—attempting to leave a shell of only 200 employees to supervise and examine large financial institutions across the country, respond to millions of consumer complaints, answer the phone for hundreds of thousands of people seeking help, monitor emergency financial risks, and run all of the agency’s other operations,” the letter said.

The senators asked Vought for a “detailed accounting” of how the mass firings would affect more than 80 statutory CFPB obligations they identified.

The CFPB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.