Enforcement Inaction
By Philip
Mattera, director of the Corporate
Research Project of Good Jobs First for the Dirt Diggers Digest
Since the beginning of this month, Trump has put his
Sharpie to orders that instruct agencies to unilaterally repeal regulations
they deem unlawful and to insert sunset provisions into others.
There is also a quiet form of deregulation stemming from the
fact that many agencies have scaled back their enforcement activities. It is
difficult to determine how much of this is being caused by operational
disruptions linked to DOGE-instigated layoffs and how much stems from
deliberate decisions to abandon cases, but the result is a sharp drop-off in
the number of announced fines and settlements.
Let’s focus on the agencies that normally handle the biggest cases. Not surprisingly, the most dramatic decline has come at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Elon Musk has targeted for elimination. Since Trump took office, the agency has announced only one new resolved case. On January 30 the payment service Wise was ordered to pay a $2 million fine for misleading customers.
Since then, instead of new penalties, the agency has issued press releases about “regulatory relief” as well as a remarkable statement which criticized an anti-redlining action brought by the agency during the Biden Administration. In November, the CFPB had fined Townstone Financial $105,000 to settle allegations that the firm discouraged African Americans from applying for mortgages. Calling that case “abusive” and “unjust,” Acting CFPB Director Russ Vought vacated the settlement and returned the $105,000 to Townstone.
Since the inauguration, the Securities and Exchange
Commission has announced only about a dozen resolved cases against companies.
During the same period (January 20-April 16) of last year, the SEC announced
more than 40 penalties. There is also a disparity in the amounts recovered.
During that period last year, the average penalty was above $8 million; this
year it has been about $2 million. Last year’s defendants included major
companies such as Volkswagen and U.S. Bancorp; this year’s list includes much smaller
firms.
The caseload at the Federal Trade Commission has also been
low. Since January 20 it has announced only two penalties—one for $193,000 and
another for $17 million. During the same period last year, the agency announced
11 penalties totaling more than $350 million. These are only cases with
monetary sanctions, unlike the current lawsuit being pursued by the FTC against
Meta Platforms, which, if successful, would likely result in structural changes
at the company.
The situation at the Justice Department is more mixed.
Combining both main Justice and the U.S. Attorneys Offices around the country,
there have been nearly 70 announcements of penalties against businesses.
More than 50 of these actions were brought under the False
Claims Act, the law designed to combat cheating by federal contractors,
including healthcare companies dealing with Medicare and other Medicaid. Very
few cases were brought in many of the other categories DOJ normally covers.
It is encouraging that DOJ is still paying attention to
contractor abuse, but it is ironic that this is happening at the same time DOGE
has been largely ignoring that abuse in its purported campaign to combat fraud
at federal agencies. Perhaps the remaining righteous prosecutors at DOJ should
teach Elon Musk where to look.