Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, could be on the chopping block after catching the eye of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk and Ramaswamy, co-leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency under the incoming Trump administration, are set to meet with Republicans next week to discuss ways to reduce federal spending, Fox Business reported on Friday.

The CFPB, a governmental watchdog that Warren helped create in 2011, could be one of the first agencies to be cut once President-elect Donald Trump regains office in January.

Republicans and their financial backers have long opposed the bureau which was formed after the 2008 banking crisis to regulate mortgages, car loans and other consumer finance. It has made its way into national headlines since Trump’s victory earlier this month.

“Delete CFPB,” Musk posted on his social media platform, X, on Wednesday. “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.”

Ramaswamy echoed his co-captain’s stance on the CFPB, an independent agency that had a budget of about $760 million in the feds’ 2024 fiscal year which ended in September.

“This is how the deep state works: when they can’t censor your speech or freeze your financial transactions directly, they pressure private companies that they regulate to do it through the back door instead,” Ramaswamy posted on X later Wednesday.

“This is called fascism,” he added. “The only right answer: SHUT IT DOWN.”

Despite the growing calls to shut her pet agency down, Warren remains optimistic about CFPB’s future. The bureau has returned more than $20 billion to consumers and has fined banks billions of dollars for wrongdoing since its creation.

“The CFPB is here to stay,” Warren told the Washington Post in an article last weekend. “So I get there’s big talk, but the laws supporting the CFPB are strong, and support across this nation from Democrats, Republicans and people who don’t pay any attention at all to politics is also strong.”

Marc Andreessen, a billionaire venture capitalist and multimillion-dollar Trump donor, catapulted the conversation around how the president-elect and Congressional Republicans look to limit the CFPB’s powers and funding.

In an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, which dropped on Tuesday, Andreessen said the CFPB’s mission is “to terrorize new startups and increase hold of existing banks to prevent new competition.”

The investor, who co-founded VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, also blasted other independent federal agencies like the Securities Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Aviation Administration for their stances against crypto, fintech, and drones.

Payday lenders objecting to a bureau rule that limits their ability to withdraw funds directly from borrower’s bank accounts saw the Supreme Court last May shoot down a legal challenge to the CFPB’s authority.

The Supreme Court’s ruling clarified that it is OK for the bureau to draw its budget from the Federal Reserve instead of the annual Congressional appropriations process.

CFPB Director Rohit Chopra told reporters after the decision that the bureau planned to beef up the size of its law enforcement office to a staff of 275 and address other matters like pawn shops, medical billing, credit reporting and financial data issues.

Plans to severely limit funding to or kill the CFPB entirely have received much chagrin from Democrats.

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of our most efficient agencies,” Florida Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost posted on X on Wednesday. “Costs less than $1B a year & has fought to return over $20B directly to Americans. But I guess it makes sense that a billionaire wants to eliminate one of the agencies that fights for working people.”

Marianne Williamson, a Democratic activist and author, added her opinion on Friday: “It is not efficient to get rid of the consumer financial protection bureau, except for those who are so rich that they don’t need the protection.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Vivek Ramaswamy (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)