Trump admin presents new plan to slash two thirds of consumer watchdog workforce

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration has developed a fresh plan to slash the workforce at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by about two thirds, stepping back from earlier efforts to get rid of nearly 90% of all employees, court documents showed.

In a filing submitted Tuesday evening to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Justice Department said the new plans showed the administration will not shut down the CFPB entirely, as a lower court had found they planned to do. CFPB representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• Under the new plan, the CFPB workforce would fall to 556 workers, fewer than a third of its size when Trump took office, and it would eliminate 85% of positions in the Division of Supervision, which oversees the conduct of banks and nonbank financial companies offering consumer services, and 80% in enforcement.

• The Justice Department said a lower court should be allowed to consider lifting a stay that currently blocks the administration from carrying out this plan.

• The administration had been battling in court until now for permission to eliminate nearly all CFPB positions, something that lawyers for an employee union and others had argued would be illegal and would prevent the agency from fulfilling duties mandated by Congress, which created the agency in 2010.

• Trump and other top officials had called for the CFPB's outright elimination, accusing it of politicized enforcement and unduly burdening companies, something advocates had rejected as an illegal giveaway to politically connected corporate actors that would jeopardize the public.

• Tuesday's motion would pause a pending appeal before the full bench of the appeals court, where judges had appeared skeptical of administration arguments that courts do not have the power to block the government from firing virtually all CFPB workers.