Musk, one of the President-elect’s confidants, is expected to lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, has expressed his support for a federal agency in the United States to protect consumers from consumer fraud.
In an early morning post on his X website, Musk called for the abolition of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent agency that oversees banks and other financial institutions.
“Get rid of the CFPB. There are too many duplicative agencies,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday.
Musk is set to advise President-elect Donald Trump’s administration in the new year, in a newly created position to reduce government bureaucracy.
Trumpet he announced his intentions of Department of Public Worksor DOGE, on November 13, with Musk and fellow entrepreneurs Vivek Ramaswamy at its head.
In a televised speech, the president-elect described the department as a committee that would “give advice and guidance from outside the Government” to “reorganize federal agencies”.
Musk, the entrepreneur known for the rocket company SpaceX and the electric car business Tesla, has already started naming companies he thinks should come. cut log.
Also on Wednesday, he has been sent vote on X asking viewers to see what should happen in the budget for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the agency that oversees federal tax collection.
The most popular result was that his budget should be “removed”.
Musk later he answered emphatically to a commentator who asked the Department of Public Health to audit the IRS: “It’s going to happen.”
Musk is comments of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, however, is one of the most direct signs that the agency could be under attack during Trump’s second term.
Established in July 2011, the office was affected by the financial crisis of 2007, which was caused by fraudulent lending in the US market. The result was a “recession” that devastated economies around the world.
To prevent a similar problem from happening again, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to reform the financial system. New agencies were tasked with overseeing and maintaining the health of the US financial system.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in particular, was established to receive consumer complaints, investigate them and eliminate practices that are “unfair, deceptive or abusive”.
Since May, the Bureau reports that his work has resulted in more than $20.7bn in compensation, debt relief and other relief measures for US citizens.
It also says it has sought responses from companies on more than 5.6 million complaints.
However, the office has been repeatedly attacked by Republicans, who blame it for overstepping its mandate.
For example, Project 2025 – a document from the Heritage Foundation think tank, designed as a right-wing leadership blueprint – to be invited for the office to be dissolved.
“The CFPB is a political, corrupt, and unaccountable agency. It is unconstitutional,” the document says. “The next president should order the agency’s immediate termination.”
Musk’s comments on Wednesday about the CFPB came in response to a complaint by Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who said the bureau “freaked out” financial institutions for political reasons.
Andreessen was a major contributor to Trump’s re-election campaign.
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