Vought Requests More CFPB Funding From Fed

Russ Vought has requested new funding transfers from the Federal Reserve for the CFPB in 2026, but those requests remain significantly below the agency’s historical quarterly needs and are being made under court pressure rather than as part of a supportive funding strategy.

What Vought requested and when

• On January 9, 2026, Acting CFPB Director Russ Vought requested about $145 millionfrom the Federal Reserve to fund the CFPB’s operations for the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 (January–March).

• This was the first time Vought requested Fed funding for the Bureau, and it followed court orders requiring the CFPB to resume using the statutory transfer mechanism instead of allowing funding to lapse.

• In the subsequent request to fund the third quarter, Vought asked for $75.8 million, which is described as a little more than half of what had been requested the prior quarter, indicating a further attempt to shrink the Bureau’s operating budget.

Court orders forcing the requests

• Federal courts in D.C. and California held that the CFPB could not lawfully refuse to request funding from the Federal Reserve and could not create a “lapse” in funding by its own interpretation of “combined earnings.”

• Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s December 2025 decision in the NTEU v. CFPB litigation and Judge Edward Davila’s March 2026 order both required the Bureau to continue requesting funds “reasonably necessary” to carry out its statutory duties.

• In his letters to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Vought explicitly noted that he disagreed with the legal conclusions but was submitting the funding requests to comply with the injunctions.

How this compares to prior funding levels

• Under Dodd‑Frank, the CFPB may request up to a capped share of the Fed’s 2009 operating expenses (originally 12 percent, later reduced by statute to 6.5 percent), adjusted for inflation.

• Before the Trump administration’s effort to declare the Fed’s “combined earnings” unavailable, the Bureau under Rohit Chopra regularly drew on this authority even after the Fed began operating at a loss, and it indicated it would need about $279–280 million in fiscal year 2026 just to maintain legally required activities.

• Vought’s $145 million and later $75.8 million requests are therefore materially lower than what prior leadership viewed as necessary for a full quarter’s operations, aligning with his stated goal of cutting staff, dropping enforcement, and ultimately shuttering the agency.

Key implications

• The fact that Vought is now “requesting more CFPB funding from the Fed” is driven by injunctions preserving the agency’s statutory funding mechanism, not by a change in policy preference toward the CFPB.

• At least for now, the court orders ensure that the CFPB continues to receive some level of Federal Reserve transfers, but the relatively low amounts requested suggest continued pressure on staffing, supervision, and enforcement capacity.