The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the independent watchdog arm of Congress, recently released a detailed report on the CFPB’s reorganization. The report was requested by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Senators Andy Kim of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, along with several House members. Their concern: that the downsizing has gone so far that the CFPB can no longer do the job it was legally created to do.
The GAO’s report lays out a striking timeline of what happened at the CFPB between February and August 2025. The agency dismissed 17 of its 34 active enforcement actions, meaning ongoing legal cases against financial companies were dropped. It planned to cut roughly 88% of its total workforce. That includes 90% of its supervision division and 80% of its enforcement division, which brings legal action when companies break the rules. Beyond staffing, the CFPB withdrew or rescinded 70 guidance documents and proposed rules, closed its Washington headquarters, and terminated leases on all of its regional offices across the country.
The GAO also ran into significant roadblocks in putting the report together. When investigators asked to meet with CFPB officials and requested information about agency contracts, staffing changes, and supervision activities, the agency refused.
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The CFPB pushed back hard when it received a draft of the report. According to a letter the agency sent to the GAO the CFPB called the document “full of biased and incomplete information,” claiming it was “initiated at the behest of hyper-partisan Democrat Members” and was aimed at undermining “President Trump’s and Acting Director Vought’s efforts to reform and right-size the CFPB.”
Read more: CFPB Funding Saga Continues With Vought’s Fed Funding Request
The GAO was not moved by that criticism. The office stated directly: “We stand by the accuracy of the facts presented in our report, which are based on publicly available information including court dockets and Federal Register notices.”
The GAO also addressed the CFPB’s claim that ongoing litigation prevented it from cooperating. In a footnote, the office reminded the agency that the existence of lawsuits does not cancel out its legal obligation to share information with government auditors. That obligation comes from a law that gives the GAO the authority to obtain information from agencies and requires agencies to provide it.
The report, per an analysis by lawyers at Ballard Spahr, a large national law firm that closely tracks financial services regulation, stops short of drawing conclusions about the impact of all these changes. That analysis will come later. This first report is essentially a detailed factual record, a timeline meant to establish what happened and when.
That follow-up report is the one to watch, according to the law firm. The GAO has said it will assess the actual effects of the CFPB’s restructuring on the agency’s ability to carry out its legally mandated mission. That means examining whether the gutting of the supervision and enforcement divisions has left American consumers more exposed to the kinds of financial abuses that the CFPB was specifically designed to stop.
For the financial technology and digital lending industries, which have faced growing CFPB scrutiny in recent years, the outcome of that future report could carry significant implications. Consumer finance is increasingly digital. If the agency responsible for overseeing it is operating at a fraction of its former capacity, the question of who, if anyone, fills that gap is one that regulators, lawmakers, and industry players alike will be watching closely.
The exchange for the debt economy
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has undergone one of the most sweeping transformations in recent U.S. regulatory history. In less than a year, the CFPB has shed most of its employees, shuttered its offices, dropped legal cases against financial companies, and pulled back nearly all of its guidance to the industry. Now, Congress is demanding a reckoning.