Patrick Caddell

President Carter's line about a majority of Americans believing the next five years would be worse than the past five years wasn't a rhetorical flourish.

It was lifted directly from polling that his advisor, Pat Caddell, had been showing him.

The 2020s have produced an even sharper version of this gap.

Unemployment fell to a 50-year low of 3.4% in early 2023 and has remained historically low since.

By April 2026, the agency had been reduced from a staff of 1,700 to 1,174, with plans to take it all the way down to 556.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4th, 2025, halved the CFPB's funding cap from 12% to 6.5% of the Federal Reserve's 2009 operating expenses.

What's left of the CFPB has rescinded nearly 70 interpretive rules, policy statements, and advisory opinions dating back to its inception and has removed consumer advisories, press releases, and guidance from its website.

The specifics of these rollbacks matter.