Congress moves to eliminate federal consumer financial protection agency
H.R. 814 — Defund the CFPB Act · Filed by Keith Self (R-TX) · 5 cosponsors · Introduced Jan 28, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends the Consumer Financial Protection Act to cap the CFPB Director's annual funding request at $0, effectively eliminating the agency's budget. It strikes the existing discretionary funding mechanism and replaces it with a hard zero, preventing the CFPB from requesting any appropriated funds for its operations.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is to eliminate the CFPB's funding authority by capping the Director's budget request at zero. This is a direct defunding measure, not a policy reform or reallocation — it is designed to render the agency operationally inert.
What the text implies
- The $0 cap does not technically dissolve the CFPB or repeal its statutory authorities — it leaves the agency's legal mandates on the books but strips its ability to staff, investigate, or enforce them, creating a 'zombie agency' with duties but no resources.
- Existing CFPB enforcement actions, pending rulemakings, and the consumer complaint database may face operational collapse or suspension, potentially leaving ongoing cases and consumer grievances unresolved.
- Financial institutions lose regulatory oversight and enforcement risk, likely reducing compliance costs and litigation exposure for banks, lenders, and servicers — a direct private benefit.
- State attorneys general and private litigation may partially fill the enforcement void, but with far less coordination, expertise, and resources than the federal agency.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary citizens lose access to federal consumer financial protections, complaint resolution, and regulatory oversight of banks, lenders, and financial servicers. The CFPB's enforcement actions, rulemaking, and consumer complaint database would cease, leaving consumers with fewer remedies against predatory lending, fraud, and unfair financial practices.
Who stands to gain
- commercial banks
- consumer lenders
- payday lenders
- debt collectors
- mortgage servicers
- financial services industry broadly
Named in the bill
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Director of the CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, Section 1017(a) CFPA, House Committee on Financial Services
Where it stands
5 cosponsors: 5 Republicans.
- Jan 28, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jan 28, 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
3 lobbying clients named this bill on 4 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $960,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 55 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 61% of bills with at least one filing.
Keith Self, the sponsor, reported $185,131 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- National Treasury Employees Union — $690,000 on 2 filings
- Defense Credit Union Council — $190,000 on 1 filing
- Gowest Credit Union Association — $80,000 on 1 filing
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 (485 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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