To comply with a federal judge’s order that funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot lapse, Russell T. Vought, the agency’s acting director, sent a request on Friday to the Federal Reserve for $145 million to fund the bureau’s operations — but he made sure to note his displeasure.
Mr. Vought, the White House budget office director who also runs the consumer bureau, has been trying to shut down the financial watchdog since he took charge of it in early 2025. He said recently that he expected to close it “within the next two, three months.”
But that cannot be done without congressional action, and court rulings in a lawsuit brought by the agency’s staff union and other plaintiffs have forced Mr. Vought to keep the bureau alive, if only barely.
The bureau is funded through cash transfers from the Federal Reserve; the agency’s director submits requests several times a year. The request on Friday is the first time Mr. Vought has sought money for the bureau. The $145 million will fund it for the current quarter, which ends in March.
Mr. Vought used an arcane legal argument late last year to claim that the Federal Reserve could no longer fund the consumer bureau because the Fed — which had operated at a loss since 2022 — had no “combined earnings” with which to finance it. That argument ran counter to the Fed’s longstanding practice.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington rejected Mr. Vought’s argument last week in a blistering ruling that opened by quoting Mr. Vought’s words about his desire to shutter the bureau.
Neither the law nor the Fed’s willingness to fund the agency had changed, Judge Jackson wrote, adding, “The only new circumstance is the administration’s determination to eliminate an agency created by Congress with the stroke of a pen.”
“I disagree with the opinion and order,” Mr. Vought wrote Friday in his funding request.
Created by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis, the consumer bureau has sweeping enforcement and rule-making powers over Wall Street. Under Democratic presidents, the agency had been an aggressive watchdog. It compelled big banks and other financiers to return nearly $20 billion to customers through refunds and canceled debts.
Mr. Vought — who has called the bureau a “woke & weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals” — stopped nearly all of its work and tried to fire 90 percent of its employees. While court orders have, for now, blocked that purge, Mr. Vought has kept most employees sidelined.
Bank examinations, for example — a core duty of the agency — came to a complete halt after his arrival and have not restarted.
Next month, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear an appeal of Judge Jackson’s decision that Mr. Vought cannot decimate the bureau by firing virtually all of its employees. The money Mr. Vought requested was a bit more than half of what the agency previously needed — before President Trump returned to office — to fund its quarterly operations. That’s in line with the sweeping domestic spending bill Mr. Trump signed last year, which slashed the total funding the agency can request from the Fed to slightly more than half of its previous amount.
Stacy Cowley is a Times business reporter who writes about a broad array of topics related to consumer finance, including student debt, the banking industry and small business.
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