House Conservatives Gear Up to Strike at Warren's Legacy With CFPB Rule Override

[CAPITOL HILL] As if House conservatives did not want DOGE to get all the action, they are gearing up to follow Thursday’s Senate action striking down a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule capping bank overdraft loan fees at $5, a further blow against the rogue agency created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the chairman of Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday:

This overdraft conversation is a critically important conversation if you are like me, a guy who grew up in poverty, a single parent household, who understands the difficulty, the challenge, of single moms making those ends meet.

The Senate vote was a Congressional Review Act resolution, a process by which a simple majority vote in each chamber overrides an executive branch regulation. No presidential signature is required.

As a practical matter, many Americans use their overdraft protection on their checking accounts as short-term loans, which, despite the fees, are preferable to fees and interest for payday loans or even credit cards.

CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said when the cap was posted: “The CFPB is cracking down on these excessive junk fees and requiring big banks to come clean about the interest rate they're charging on overdraft loans.”

The reality of reducing the overdraft fee to $5 is that banks will just remove the overdraft loan option.

Arkansas Republican Rep. J. French Hill, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, leads the House effort.

Hill said in a Feb. 13 statement that he was acting against the CFPB rule and its rule-making process.

“Tim Scott and I were clear when we told federal agencies--including the CFPB--to stop all midnight rulemaking, which former Director Chopra blatantly disregarded,” the chairman said.

“The CFPB needs guardrails on its enforcement and rulemaking powers, and this rule is another clear example of why,” he added. “Chairman Scott and I will continue to work with our fellow Republicans to rein in the agency with statutory direction.”

Scott said what was at stake was preserving access to the banking system for all Americans.

“That sometimes includes, as it did for us, free checking,” he said. “A free checking account is not free, but with the revenue streams coming into the institutions, they can use those revenues as an option to provide free checking for those living paycheck to paycheck.”

In his Senate floor remarks, the Palmetto State’s junior senator also cited a 2021 academic study conducted by the New York Federal Reserve, “Who Pays the Price? Overdraft Fee Ceilings and the Unbanked,” whose findings aligned with the senator’s own life experience.

“We find no evidence that being banked weakens households’ broader credit health, including delinquency, indebtedness, and credit scores,” the authors wrote. “We conclude that overdraft fee caps hamper, rather than foster, financial inclusion.”

The CFPB rule was published Dec. 12, 2024,, and scheduled to go into effect Oct. 2025, in a flurry of regulatory rules and actions by the administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In addition to the cap on overdraft fees, the CFPB was seeking legal redress over fees from the Navy Federal Credit Union, Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, and Atlantic Union.

The rule was strictly performative at one level, given that voters were returning President Donald J. Trump, a long-term opponent of the CFPB and its banking regulations, to the White House.

Warren, Obama created CFPB

The CFPB was conceived by then-Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, and President Barack Obama championed its inclusion in the Dodd-Frank bill. After he signed the bill on July 21, 2010, Obama empowered Warren as both a senior White House staffer and Treasury Department official to enact the bureau.

Like Obamacare, despite modifications along the way, Dodd-Frank remains the law of the land, including the CFPB, a testament to Democrats’ willingness to burn their majorities to achieve their agenda.

In immediately subsequent cycles, Democrats lost the House, Senate, and White House, but Republicans in power dared not risk their seats to undo what Obama and Democrats had wrought.

Trump’s second term, however, offers signs that Republicans have gotten the message.

Musk, Vought flanking CFPB making its last stand

Not only are Capitol Hill conservatives striking at the CFPB cap on overdraft loan fees, but Trump also fired Chopra, which made Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought acting bureau director.

Vought proceeded to lay off or fire probationary and contract employees, but federal judges have ordered them back to work--so Vought put them on administrative leave.

Vought ordered all CFPB operations to shut down and invited members of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or now officially, the U.S. DOGE Service, to look under the hood.

Friday, Senior U.S. District of Columbia District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the Trump administration to stop dismantling the bureau, until she could decide what to do next.

In her 112-page memorandum opinion upon a motion by the National Treasury Employees Union, the 70-year-old Obama appointee quoted a Musk X post, along with Vought and Trump, as if it were a prologue to her opinion.

From Vought: “The CFPB has been a woke and weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time. This must end.”

From Trump: "That was a very important thing to get rid of.”

CFPB RIP 🪦
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025

Jackson herself said: “The Court cannot look away or the CFPB will be dissolved and dismantled completely in approximately thirty days, well before this lawsuit has come to its conclusion."

In fact, there is no better gauge of CFPB’s vulnerability than Warren’s hysterics at a Feb. 10 rally in front of the bureau’s offices and three days after DOGE entered the chat.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have told the financial cops at the CFPB to stand down,” said the former attorney for asbestos companies.

“Congress built it, and no one other than Congress, not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk--no one can fire the financial cops,” said the real estate speculator and senator.

“Understand this – this fight is about more than one little agency.”

Elon Musk and DOGE are bringing much-needed accountability to our out-of-control bureaucracy as they take a chainsaw to rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.

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