Colorado advocacy groups slam Trump cuts to agency that keeps people from ‘getting screwed over by corporations’

Immigrant, DOGE leader and corporate welfare recipient Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X.

“The richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, is heading up DOGE, and one of the first acts of DOGE was the dismantling of the agency which is critically responsible for protecting people from big banks and Wall Street abuses, from big tech, from all of the ways in which people are getting screwed over by corporations,” said David Seligman, executive director of Towards Justice, a progressive advocacy group, at a news event at Bittersweet Park in Greeley earlier this week.

Seligman was referring to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Trump administration has attempted to fire nearly 90% of CFPB’s staff, but U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson stopped this for now.

Nine members of various organizations and a videographer were present.

Charles Brennan of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy explained that the “CFPB’s job is simple: make sure financial companies follow the law and treat people fairly and, when they don’t, make it right. As part of this mandate, the CFPB plays an important role in identifying emerging issues facing consumers and studying them in greater detail so that policymakers and advocates can prevent bad actors from exploiting Americans.”

Chris deGruy Kennedy, a former state representative who now directs the Bell Policy Center explained that many Americans may not even realize that they have benefited personally from the work of the CPFB, saying the  “challenge is that so many of the harms that were prevented by the CFPB were not really being tracked. So, even though the CFPB was tracking, you know, the individual people that may have been impacted, they don’t know what they were spared, right? They don’t know about the fees that they didn’t have to pay.”

He added, that the CFPB “returned money to 205 million Americans over the last 15 years.”

Seligman went on to say, “Now, you may wonder why, why target the Consumer Protection Bureau? Here’s one possibility: days before the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began, Elon Musk and X announced the deal between X and Visa that would allow Elon Musk to expand his empire into the payment space and, you know, X and Visa are at some point in 2025 going to launch a project called X Money. X Money will be a digital wallet. Digital wallets are — we see this across the economy — digital wallets are ripe for fraud, for abuse. People suffer all the time because there isn’t proper oversight of digital wallets, and how they function. Immediately after announcing his foray into the payments and digital financial space, DOGE tries to dismantle the Consumer Protection Bureau. 

“We need to look at not only who’s getting harmed, working families, but who’s benefiting here, who’s this designed to protect. It’s designed to protect, in this case, literally the richest man on the planet.”

Colorado Treasurer Dave Young said, “My job is to protect taxpayer dollars and look out for the financial health of people across the state of Colorado, and this is why I’m here today. I’m very concerned about what’s happening at many levels of the federal government. This elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a real problem. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looks after your interests, they’re the ones that are protecting you against financial abuse, and this effort to undermine and eliminate that bureau actually removes the people that look out for you and protect your money.”

Speakers pointed out that the CPFB guards against exploitation by medical companies as well.

“I’m here today because medical debt and financial stress are eroding the health and well-being of individuals and families, not just nationally but right now, right here in Colorado,” said Mannat Singh, executive director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. 

“It’s financial toxicity when the cost of care leads to credit damage, skipped medications, housing insecurity, and delays in treatment and care,” Mannat continued. “Financial toxicity doesn’t just harm your wallet, it hurts your health. This is why the Consumer Protection Bureau is vitally important to our work. They are one of our dear partners in the effort to protect consumers’ financial health and hold the industry accountable for its financially toxic abuses. The CFPB exists to be a check on financial practices that are confusing, predatory, or simply unfair. It’s been one of the few places where everyday people have someone fighting for them in a system that is built to prioritize profits over people. The CFPB has returned over $21 billion to consumers cheated or overcharged by financial companies, pushed for transparency in medical billing and fairness in collections so that families aren’t blindsided or harassed into financial ruin and has a projected $49 billion in medical debt removed from credit reports affecting 50 million people.”

“Getting sick shouldn’t mean going broke,” she added.

Shortly after the event, a U.S. court of appeals reinstated a temporary ban on mass firings at the CFPB.

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on the Colorado Times Recorder website.