Jonathan Kolodziej Quoted in American Banker and National Mortgage News on Uncertainty at the CFPB

Bradley attorney Jonathan Kolodziej was quoted in American Banker and National Mortgage News on how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been effectively neutralized by the Trump administration. Under Acting Director Russell Vought, the CFPB has been subjected to a near-daily onslaught of reversals of rules, regulations and enforcement actions that were issued by former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra during the Biden administration. 

“The last eight months or so have been unlike any others with just a completely different tenor, completely different levels of activity and a lot of uncertainty," said Kolodziej.

Kolodziej described the timeline of the CFPB's actions, in which Vought ordered “a comprehensive pause,” of the bureau's work.

Many experts agree that perhaps the single biggest blow to the CFPB came in July when Congress passed and the president signed a massive tax and spending bill, mostly along party lines, with two Republican holdouts. The bill created a new method for controlling the funding of the CFPB by capping the amount of money that the bureau can receive from the Federal Reserve's operating budget at 6.5% — down from 12% previously. With the CFPB's budget this year capped at $446 million, down from $785.4 million in maximum funding last year, the bureau's employees are bracing for a new round of layoffs.

Experts acknowledge that while the CFPB currently is not functioning as a normal regulator, it has not been eliminated. 

“I do think it will be hard to get back to where the CFPB was because they permanently cut the CFPB funding in half,” Kolodziej said. 

He argues that Congress needs to write statutes with more far specific instructions on how an agency regulates. 

“If the CFPB needs to conduct 400 exams a year, then we need a statute that says that because right now, all the statute says is that the CFPB shall require reports and conduct examinations on a periodic basis, and that's absolutely subject to debate and interpretation.”

The full article, “How the Trump administration has neutralized the CFPB,” was published by both American Banker and National Mortgage News on September 18, 2025. (login required)