Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., met with Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau (CFPB) workers on Friday who have been fired on account of Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) federal workforce reductions.
CFPB has offered over $21 billion in client reduction, in accordance with the company’s newest information from Dec. 3. 2024. Kaine accused Musk of concentrating on the CFPB with DOGE cuts for his personal acquire.
“The fact that the Trump administration would target these guys at the front end of a chainsaw massacre… Why are you going after these consumer protection advocates? It smells really bad. I mean, it makes it seem like it happened because Musk has some particular interest in gutting these regulators who are protecting everyday folks.”
In an interview with Fox Information Digital following his assembly with former CFPB workers, Kaine mentioned the CFPB saved “tens of thousands of Virginians” from unfair or abusive monetary practices.
Sen. Tim Kaine met with CFPB workers on Friday who have been fired on account of Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity federal workforce reductions. Kaine accused Musk of concentrating on the CFPB for his personal acquire. (Getty/Reuters)
“These folks are doing great work,” Kaine mentioned. “This is an agency that returned $21 billion to consumers who got ripped off. I know the Virginia statistics. It’s tens of thousands of Virginians who got relief because of the work that these folks did.”
Virginia has the second-highest variety of federal civilian workers in america, in accordance with information from the Workplace of Personnel Administration (OPM). Kaine has been a vocal opponent of DOGE’s federal workforce cuts, holding city corridor conferences to handle issues from his constituents.
Kaine mentioned Musk and DOGE are “hurting people to help themselves” by selling a authorities that yields a “huge giveaway to Elon Musk and people just like him.”
“There’s just too much bubbling up about Musk trying to get a contract here with the Department of State, trying to displace a contract at the DoD, and maybe steer it toward either his own companies or companies that he’s close to. When you allow an unelected guy to just come with the chainsaw and have access to people’s… and look, they’ve released data that they shouldn’t release: sensitive data, classified data, names of people who did not authorize them to put their data out to the world. They’re engaging in behavior that’s hurting people… why? I think they’re hurting people to help themselves,” Kaine mentioned.
Elon Musk, wields a chainsaw throughout an look at CPAC, on Feb. 20, 2025, in Nationwide Harbor, Maryland. (GETTY)
Concerning the continued federal workforce firings, Kaine mentioned: “They ain’t using a hatchet. They’re using a chainsaw.” Kaine mentioned Trump is counting on government actions to dismantle authorities businesses as a result of even congressional Republicans wouldn’t “go along with this stuff that he’s doing.”
“He is not confident he could get even Republican majorities to go along with this stuff. He’s going to do what he can, because even these Republican majorities that seem completely cowed and submissive, with no backbone and no willingness to exercise a vocal cord that they have, he doesn’t think they will go along with this stuff that he’s doing,” Kaine mentioned.
The White Home didn’t reply to Fox Information Digital’s request for remark by the deadline of this text.
The Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 10, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
Joe Valenti, a former CFPB time period employee who met with Kaine on Friday, advised Fox Information Digital he was locked out of the CFPB workplace final month, obtained a stop-work order after which a termination letter with no severance.
Valenti mentioned client finance legal guidelines are “not necessarily being enforced” by halting CFPB operations.
“The federal government is abdicating from its role in protecting working people from financial harms and that affects low-income constituents, like the people who I served at CFPB. It affects service members, affects veterans, seniors. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is one of the laws that CFPB would oversee and enforce. That goes back to World War I. If you don’t have a cop at the beat at all, what’s going on in the markets and what does it mean for people who are affected by market abuses?” Valenti mentioned.
CPFB is one among a number of businesses that has been impacted by DOGE’s federal workforce reductions. Elon Musk posted on X on Feb. 7, “CFPB RIP,” adopted by a headstone emoji.
President Donald Trump has touted CFPB cuts, telling the Future Funding Initiative Institute Precedence Summit on Feb. 19 that his administration “virtually shut down” CFPB.
“We virtually shut down the out-of-control CFPB, escorting radical-left bureaucrats out of the building and locking the doors behind them. What they were doing was so terrible. Where they were spending the money was so terrible,” Trump mentioned.
President Donald Trump indicators a collection of government orders within the Oval Workplace on the White Home on Feb. 10, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs)
Trump confirmed to reporters within the Oval Workplace on Feb. 10 his plan to have the company “totally eliminated.” Trump mentioned the CFPB was a “waste” used “to destroy some very good people” and it was a “very important thing to get rid of.”
A criticism filed final month by the Nationwide Treasury Staff Union (NTEU) accuses Russell Vought, CFPB performing director and director of the Workplace of Administration and Funds (OMB), of “preparing to conduct another mass firing, this time of over 95% of the Bureau’s employees.”
Russell Vought is sworn in in the course of the Senate Banking Committee affirmation listening to on Jan. 22, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Photographs)
Vought ordered CFPB workers to halt company operations except in any other case accredited on Feb. 10. Seventy-three newly employed “probationary employees” and 70 to 100 “term employees” have been subsequently fired whereas round 200 contracts have been canceled, in accordance with the lawsuit and media stories.
Three CFPB leaders have been positioned on administrative go away in early February, Fox Information Digital confirmed. An company spokesperson mentioned CFPB’s chief authorized officer, Mark Paoletta, positioned Lorelei Salas, the CFPB’s supervision director, and Eric Halperin, the company’s enforcement chief, and Zixta Martinez, the company’s deputy director, on administrative go away.
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There have been protests exterior the CFPB headquarters in Washington because the firings, that includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, who initially proposed the company.
CFPB is an unbiased authorities company supposed to guard customers from unfair monetary practices within the personal sector. It was created by President Barack Obama’s administration in 2010 following the Nice Recession of 2008.
Fox Information Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.
