Of all the things the new Trump administration has done, effectively shuttering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is one of the best. It's a constitutional abomination created to exist outside the political order and accountability. It's a technocrat's dream, and Donald Trump literally shut it down with one neat trick.

Originally Elizabeth Warren's brainchild, the CFPB is an independent agency that does not get its funding from Congress. Instead, it draws money from the Federal Reserve. The CFPB can pull in more money than it needs, invest it, and create an independent, unaccountable bureaucratic empire with a growing cash flow.

In 2012, then-Rep. Randy Neugebauer was on the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and couldn't get any answers out of the agency. "I have repeatedly asked to review the bureau's statutorily required financial operating plans and forecasts. These requests were denied. I have repeatedly requested that the bureau expand its Fiscal Year 2013 budget justification for $447,688,000 to more than a scanty 25 pages. These requests were denied."

The denials have continued over the years. Neugebauer noted, "Once the director has decided that a money draw is 'necessary,' there is nobody with authority to prevent these funds from being paid out. Not congressional appropriators. Not the Fed. Not even the president's Office of Management and Budget."

The CFPB even tried to avoid executive oversight, preventing Donald Trump from removing its director. The Supreme Court struck that down in 2020, saying the President did have the constitutional power to remove these directors for any reason.

The CFPB is the definition of a bureaucratic tyranny—or, in other words, a progressive's dream. It has all the regulations in the world, with no pesky interference from the political order trying to check powers, regulations, and more. It claims to protect the people while never being answerable to them.

There's just one catch: none of these progressives ever dreamed that Republicans would attempt to kill the agency. Remember how Neugebauer said the agency would determine whatever money it wanted was necessary and get it? Russ Vought, Donald Trump's pick to head the agency, has called the bluff: he says the CFPB needs no money.

Vought said, "Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not 'reasonably necessary' to carry out its duties. The Bureau's current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. This spigot, long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability, is now being turned off."

However, this is likely to get worse for Democrats. There's likely nothing Elizabeth Warren or anyone in Congress can do to stop Vought from reducing the CFPB's budget to zero and sending all the money back to the Federal Reserve.

Writing in Reason, law professor Josh Blackman notes, "I don't even know if there is some mechanism by which Congress could force the agency to take appropriated funds. I'm sure some D.C. Circuit panel could try to force Vought to request funding from the Federal Reserve. But that would be a striking and novel interference with executive power. Again, if the CFPB was a normal agency, the failure to spend money would raise impoundment concerns. But the CFPB was made above the appropriation power."

Had Elizabeth Warren created a standard agency, it would have been forced to obey basic laws. She could hold Vought accountable and even demand transparency, as Democrats are doing with Trump's other attacks on the administrative state.

But the CPFB is different. Warren and the Democrats wanted something above the constitutional order. They wanted to create regulations without political interference. Now, they've lost control of their precious agency, and there's nothing they can do about it.

Sure, Warren will go on television and claim this is somehow fascist and evil, but all Trump did was turn the agency on its head. He did what no Democrat thought would happen: he turned down the power of the agency to dictate to others. 

Ultimately, this is only a short-term fix. We need the agency shuttered for good. Congress needs to get rid of it or, at minimum, change the funding mechanism to force the agency to be a normal, transparent entity that voters can monitor. 

But until then, watching the CFPB lose all influence through the clever trick of inverting its funding is quite funny. Elizabeth Warren was hoisted by her own petard, and she's powerless to stop it—as are all the bureaucrats watching their power wane.

Power is being returned to the people and Congress, where it is intended to be. Those protesting the sanctity of unaccountable federal agencies are the problem.