Last Friday, Elon Musk posted a succinct boast on the social media platform he owns. “CFPB RIP,” it said, along with an image of a tombstone. He was bragging that he had, at least for the moment, shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a regulatory agency that polices the business practices of plutocrats like him.
Musk is not just the richest man in the United States but the wealthiest person who’s ever lived. He also owns multiple companies that rake in billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government. And now, he has a major role in the Trump administration. How major? On Tuesday, he joined Trump for a press conference from the Oval Office where, for much of the event, Musk stood and spoke while Trump sat at his desk looking bored.
Musk’s formal position is an odd one. He heads something called “the Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). But DOGE is a department. Those have to be created by acts of Congress. Nor does it seem particularly focused on government efficiency. Instead, its freewheeling “audits” of various federal departments and agencies have amounted to a campaign of de facto budget cutting and deregulation not authorized by any legislation. Working together with acting secretaries and agency heads recently appointed by Trump, Musk’s DOGE has put a stop to congressionally authorized spending and fired (or put on leave, or ordered to halt all work) many thousands of federal employees.
This is one instance of a broader pattern of Musk’s raid on the regulatory state redounding to his personal benefit.
Nowhere has the disconnect between this agenda and the stated mission of increasing “government efficiency” been more obvious than DOGE’s assault on the CFPB. The total budget of that agency seems to be well under $1 billion, and it has returned $20 billion to consumers in recent years by cracking down on junk fees and similar unsavory practices. That’s actually a…
Auteur: Ben Burgis
