New BiggerPockets Article: How DOGE’s Targeting of CFPB and HUD Really Impacts Real Estate
Any why the CRPB isn't one of DOGE's good targets
This is an excerpt from an article originally published on BiggerPockets.com
It seems like almost everyone has a strong opinion on the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that fits in with the partisan divisions that have become so prominent in our society today. Some have even gone so far as to set Tesla cars on fire. Personally, though, I’m rather ambivalent.
For one, the U.S. government is clearly bloated, spending $6.9 trillion per year as of 2024, with enormous amounts of waste and cronyism. On the other hand, it is an undeniably bad look to have the richest man in the world leading a group that’s firing thousands of people. The host of overblown and exaggerated claims coming from DOGE hasn’t helped either.
The biggest effect DOGE could have on the housing market is by far its face-off with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). According to HUD’s Trump-appointed Secretary, there are $260 million in cuts coming, and some reports claim that as much as 50% of HUD’s workforce could be laid off.
While such an action would certainly save taxpayers money, it could also result in a variety of problems, including delays in Section 8’s (already slow) payments. For more about this political fight and the consequences it could have for real estate investors, please see Jeff Vasishta’s excellent article here on BiggerPockets.
DOGE’s Many Targets
DOGE’s first major target was USAID. While admittedly USAID does provide important services to poor nations, the agency has also wasted a lot of money in a sometimes absurd fashion, including $2 million for pottery classes in Morocco, $20 million to make a Sesame Street-like show in Iraq, $2 million to help fund gender transitions in Guatemala, and $1 million for the lab in Wuhan where COVID-19 very well might have leaked from.
Moreover, USAID has a dark underside. One of its primary beneficiaries is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In fact, the NED received about 90% of its $3 billion budget from USAID in 2023, making it a de facto government agency. And the government agency it resembles most is the Central Intelligence Agency. As the NED’s cofounder Allen Weinstein put it, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
For anyone who’s wondering, the CIA doesn’t exactly have a good history of supporting democracy.
Indeed, the NED has been caught meddling in multiple countries’ internal politics and supporting numerous color revolutions since its founding. Perhaps this is worthwhile, but in the humble opinion of this author, the U.S. government has no business interfering in the politics of foreign nations in this way and certainly shouldn’t be doing it on the taxpayers’ dime.
Unfortunately, DOGE hasn’t done much to go after corporate welfare or the bloated military budget. But it’s also important to recognize that not all taxpayer money is so poorly spent. And one of DOGE’s more recent targets would save little money and could genuinely harm consumers, as well as real estate investors.
DOGE vs. the Consumer Financial Protection Board
Thus, we turn to DOGE’s battle with the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB), the brainchild of left-wing Senator Elizabeth Warren that was founded in 2011 in the wake of the real estate collapse and financial crisis. DOGE almost immediately put the CFPB in its sights, and on Feb. 10, the Trump administration stopped work at the CFPB. A court injunction prevented the agency from being shut down for now, but as of this writing, its future is very much in doubt.
…
To read the read the rest, please visit to BiggerPockets.com
You can find my other book, Awesomeness, here.
And the audiobook here.
And please subscribe to my YouTube channel.