Congress moves to starve consumer watchdog of emergency reserves
H.R. 3141 — CFPB Budget Integrity Act · Filed by Troy Downing (R-MT) · 6 cosponsors · Introduced May 1, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill caps the CFPB's unobligated balances (money set aside but not yet spent) at 5% of its annual budget. Any excess must be returned to the U.S. Treasury. The CFPB must also report on how it uses unobligated balances. The effect is to force the agency to spend down reserves or forfeit them, reducing its financial autonomy and ability to fund enforcement or operations in future years without new appropriations.
Why we flagged it
The bill does not repeal CFPB authority or rules; it starves the agency of financial reserves, achieving de facto deregulation by making enforcement and proactive oversight harder to sustain. This is a common indirect method of weakening regulatory capacity.
What the text implies
- Forcing the CFPB to return reserves to Treasury may reduce its ability to fund multi-year investigations or settlements without annual appropriations, weakening enforcement against large financial institutions.
- A 5% cap on unobligated balances is unusually restrictive compared to typical federal agency reserves (often 10–25% of budget), suggesting intent to maximize cash extraction rather than prudent financial management.
- The reporting requirement on unobligated balance use may be pretext for future legislative action to further restrict the agency's discretion or justify deeper budget cuts.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Citizens lose the benefit of a well-funded consumer protection agency. By forcing the CFPB to forfeit reserves, the bill reduces the agency's ability to respond to emerging financial harms, conduct investigations, or maintain enforcement capacity during budget cycles. A consumer protection agency with depleted reserves is a weaker agency.
Who stands to gain
- financial services industry (banks, lenders, servicers)
- entities subject to CFPB enforcement
Named in the bill
Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB), Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, Section 1017(a)(2), Section 1017(e)(4), U.S. Treasury
Where it stands
6 cosponsors: 6 Republicans.
- May 1, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- May 1, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Financial Services · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Financial Services”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $690,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 69 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Troy Downing, the sponsor, reported $762,100 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- National Treasury Employees Union — $690,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (795 characters) on Jun 8, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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