CFPB's Vought testifies for the first time before leaving

Appearances on Capitol Hill require an invitation, and some experts suggest that Vought could have obtained an invitation anytime he wanted. 

"Who knows whether he communicated to Rep. [French] Hill and Sen. [Tim] Scott that he did not want to testify or whether they decided on their own that they did not want to give the Democrats a chance to go at Vought," said David Silberman, senior advisor at the Financial Health Network and a former CFPB associate director for research, markets and regulation.

The CFPB by statute is obligated to produce semi-annual reports and the director is required to appear twice a year annually before Congress. Under Vought, the bureau issued a report in December 2025 that covered the period from March through September 2024. Then in March, the CFPB issued a semi-annual report covering a 15-month period from October 2024 through December 2025, said Silberman.

At past CFPB hearings,  Republican lawmakers largely hewed to a script of focusing on how "out of control" the CFPB was under the Biden administration. Some lawmakers may cite a February report from the administration's Council of Economic Advisers that claims the CFPB's regulations have cost consumers at least $237 billion. 

Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to address Vought's aggressive takeover of the CFPB last year, when he immediately locked federal employees out of the bureau's now-former headquarters, and instructed them to "stand down" and halt all supervision and examination activity. It is still unclear if exams have restarted.  

Ranking member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is expected to go on the attack given Vought's aggressive deregulation and rejection of longstanding legal doctrines, particularly the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. In April, the CFPB issued a sweeping final rule that makes it much tougher to prove discrimination in lending. Vought and the Trump administration also have eliminated prohibitions on discouraging applicants from applying for loans and put major restrictions on special purpose credit programs.

Vought's appearance in Congress likely will ignite more questions about the future of the CFPB and his aggressive efforts to fire federal employees. The National Treasury Employees Union sued Vought last year to block his plans to lay off between 90% and 95% of the bureau's workforce.

The legal battle has left the agency in a state of suspended animation, with hundreds of employees facing uncertain futures.

Vought's strict new "back-to-work" mandates have drawn sharp criticism for creating operational chaos. The bureau has instituted a telework policy that requires employees to share space, despite only having roughly 500 physical seats available for more than 1,100 employees, a consequence of Vought breaking the CFPB's previous lease agreements.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, finally got her time to rail against Russell Vought in his capacity as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Although the head of the CFPB is meant to testify regularly in front of Congress, Vought has avoided doing so, much to the chagrin of Waters and other Democratic lawmakers. Waters took her time in her opening statement to deliver scathing comments. 

"Instead of being proud of your work, you've been hiding while unlawfully trying and thankfully failing to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," Waters said. "I've never delighted in someone's failure as much as I've delighted in yours." 

Democrats throughout the hearing are expected to make a show of Vought's testimony, criticizing the Trump administration's attempted gutting of the bureau, which Vought represents. 

"You have blocked billions of dollars from being returned to American soldiers," Waters said. "You have even been terrible for the financial services industry, throwing out basic guidance and safeguards the industry had asked for. And your message is clear: you're defunding the police, and you're breaking the law to do it."

In his opening remarks, Vought said that his team from the Office of Management and Budget looked "under the hood and found an agency that was weaponized out of control and had gone far beyond its statutory mandate."

"Though we have improved a great deal about how to operate, the bureau remains structurally defective, and I do not believe it should exist in its current form," Vought said.

Vought cited the Council of Economic Advisor's report, claiming the CFPB had stifled economic growth and innovation, and disproportionately increased compliance costs for financial firms. He claimed that past enforcement advanced "a political agenda outside the accountability and oversight from elected officials in the American people."

"This agency actually imposed huge costs on the American people and stifled the innovation and resourcefulness that is necessary for a strong economy," Vought said. "Consumers paid the price, literally in the form of higher prices, reduced product offerings, increased borrowing expenses, and the misuse of their taxpayer dollars."

Vought described how he put in place a so-called "humility pledge," that examiners must recite at exams. Vought said the CFPB under his leadership is "operating with humility, accountability, and fiscal responsibility."

Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said that the bureau didn't work with the financial industry as the Trump administration looks to cut off credit access more thoroughly to undocumented workers in the United States.

The White House earlier this year issued an executive order directing financial regulators and banks to scrutinize activity involving undocumented immigrant workers as part of banks' anti-money-laundering regulatory regime.The administration called on the CFPB specifically to issue guidance to banks on "red flags" to identify undocumented workers' informal working arrangements. 

Banks have pushed back against this order, saying that doing so would be costly and too burdensome. It's been one of many unexpected points of contention between the Republican administration and their traditional allies in the finance industry. 

In response to a question from Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-Calif., Vought said that the administration didn't check in with the industry before issuing the order, but said that, as far as whether immigrants have the ability to repay their loans, the bureau is doing "our work." 

"We have to take input," Vought said. "We're going to regulate it based on what the law says and that's what we're doing with the ability to pay with regard to these lenders."