Two senior officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) resigned on Tuesday.
Both Lorelei Salas, assistant director of supervisory policy, and Eric Halperin, assistant director of the Executive Office, sent emails to the team announcing their decision to step down.
“The bureau has been instructed to stop. I don't think it's appropriate or legal to stop all supervisory activities and exams, and I can't serve as supervisory director.
White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought was tapped to serve as acting CFPB director late last week, and on Monday he told staff “stops from performing any work task.” He said.
Vought also announced over the weekend that he is not planning to obtain the agency's next drawdown from the Federal Reserve, and employees were informed this week that the agency's headquarters would be closed.
This series of events, closely mirroring what was filmed last week at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), left staff and outside observers nervous about the future of the CFPB.
“You know you're worried about your future, the future of the bureau, and more importantly, the impact these drastic changes will have on all of us on our everyday consumers,” Saras said. He spoke in an email Tuesday.
“It has an incredible impact that guarantees basic consumer protection and its legacy can withstand,” she added.
Halperin said in a message to staff on Tuesday that he does not believe he “is able to serve my role effectively and protects American consumers.”
“There are millions of consumers who know you have a back when it counts,” he added in an email reviewed by the hill. “As I told you in the past, the path to justice for the consumer is long, progress is not necessarily linear, and success requires a lot of effort. Your work is trusted in people's lives. It made so much difference.”
Both Salas and Halperin joined CFPB in October 2021 under the guidance of former director Rohit Chopra.
Chopra warned on Monday that defeating the agency was “pleading for another financial crisis.”
“We previously did this experiment in the years leading up to the subprime mortgage crisis. As we all know, it was an absolute catastrophe,” Chopra told MSNBC. I did. “We have a set of essentially unsupervised mortgage lenders and other businesses that have wiped out our trillion dollar wealth.”
