U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing has Warren urge Fed Chair Powell to block DOGE access to Fed payment infrastructure and keep the CFPB funded

The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs published a minority press release and transcript excerpts in which Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren pressed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to work with Congress to prevent DOGE from accessing the Federal Reserve’s payment infrastructure and to avoid participating in efforts to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), including by ensuring the CFPB remains funded as required by law. Warren challenged Treasury Secretary Bessent’s assertion that DOGE cannot interfere with Treasury payments because the Fed is ultimately in control, arguing that the Fed executes Treasury payment instructions and may not be able to detect manipulated instructions or legally override them. She also claimed that work at the CFPB has been frozen, leaving no oversight of the USD 18 trillion consumer lending market, and urged Powell not to make the Fed an accomplice to what she characterised as illegal impoundment of CFPB funding. Separately, Warren called for a meaningful interest rate cut in March 2025 and criticised several recent Fed actions she said followed President Trump’s election, including removing diversity and inclusion content from the Fed’s website, exiting an international central bank climate-risk information group, instituting a hiring freeze, and announcing plans to change large-bank stress tests.