NEW YORK — Senate Republicans blocked an attempt by a group of Democrats to roll back several policy changes made under President Donald Trump to the nation’s consumer protection laws, ranging from how medical debts are collected to overdraft fees and consumer protections for members of the military.
The push by Senate Democrats on Wednesday was a maneuver to force vulnerable GOP senators to take politically difficult votes in an election year as Democrats try to hammer Republicans on the economy in their messaging going into the fall. The Senate took three rollcall votes, with each resolution defeated largely along party lines. Senators also took a series of votes on other CFPB policy rollbacks, all of which were rejected by voice vote.
The votes were tied to rule or regulatory changes made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the Trump administration took over the bureau in February 2025. The bureau has rescinded 67 policies under its acting director, Russell Vought, who is also President Donald Trump’s budget director. Vought has publicly said that his goal is to effectively dismantle the agency.
“The Trump Administration is hell-bent on destroying the agency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and the top defender of the bureau in Congress.
Warren added that the changes at the bureau signal that “the Trump Administration has abandoned consumers and is making life more expensive for them.”
The resolutions were not expected to pass. However, in an election year, the votes could be used as ammunition against vulnerable GOP senators up for reelection, including Susan Collins of Maine, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and John Cornyn of Texas. Collins voted with Democrats in favor of rolling back the Trump administration’s changes.
One vote Democrats sought was for the CFPB’s policy change on overdraft fees. The Biden Administration issued guidance in 2024 requiring banks to obtain their customers’ affirmative consent before charging an overdraft fee. That guidance was repealed under President Trump, which Democrats argue will lead to more Americans paying overdraft fees. The Senate voted down the resolution 47-53.
“When they got rid of this rule, it showed that (President Trump) didn’t care about Americans living paycheck to paycheck,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, designed to operate as an independent financial regulator with broad enforcement authority over consumer financial products and services. The bureau estimated in 2024 that it had returned $17.5 billion to American consumers and had imposed $4 billion in fines and penalties against financial companies.
Polling over the years has shown consistent bipartisan support from voters for the CFPB and its mission. A March survey conducted by the bipartisan polling firms Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting found that more than 8 in 10 Americans – including majorities of Republicans – said they supported the agency’s role in regulating banks and other financial services companies.
But since February 2025, the CFPB has largely been inoperable. The bulk of the bureau’s staff remains under orders not to work, and much of the CFPB’s business these days is to unwind previous work the bureau did under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and in Trump’s first term. The bureau’s operating budget is expected to shrink as well after Trump’s big tax and spending cuts law reduced the amount of money the bureau receives from the Federal Reserve.
“Russell Vought is unilaterally defacing this agency and taking it apart,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island.
Republicans have defended President Trump’s changes at the bureau. Republicans largely see the CFPB as an agency with too much centralized power and unaccountable to Congress, and they have repeatedly attempted to diminish it since its creation.
“I can’t think of a worse way to govern than the Biden administration’s approach to the CFPB and the playbook that they used time and time again, putting onerous pressure on small businesses,” said Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
Democrats used the Congressional Review Act, a law allows Congress an opportunity to overturn rules issued by federal agencies once those rules are finalized. . The 1996 law was used sparingly in its first two decades, but its use increased during Trump’s first term, when a Republican-controlled Congress overturned more than a dozen rules finalized during President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration. Democrats, in turn, used the law in 2021 to overturn several Trump-era policies.
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report from Washington.
