Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

27. Financial Regulatory Agencies · Notable · Needs Congress

Statutorily define 'deceptive, unfair, and abusive' practices

Not started

839 27. Financial Regulatory Agencies

“Specify the nature of “deceptive, unfair, and abusive” practices to define the scope of the CFPB mission more precisely.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Nothing has specified what these terms mean; the record runs the other way. The one document that did attempt a definition — the Bureau's 2023 Statement of Policy Regarding Prohibition on Abusive Acts or Practices, 88 FR 21883 — was withdrawn on 2025-05-12 as part of a sweep of sixty-seven guidance documents, leaving the statutory terms less specified than before rather than more. A Senate resolution to disapprove that withdrawal under the Congressional Review Act, S.J.Res. 147, failed on a motion to proceed on 2026-05-13, and its House companion H.J.Res. 180 was referred and never reported. The bill that would do the ask, H.R. 1652, the Rectifying UDAAP Act, would write a statutory definition of "abusive act or practice", require the Bureau to define it by rule and bar reading discrimination into the authority — and it has sat in the Financial Services Committee since 2025-02-27. A Federal Register full-text search restricted to the CFPB for "abusive act or practice" since 2025-01-20 returns zero documents.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • H.R. 1652 was read at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr1652ih/html/BILLS-119hr1652ih.htm (loaded 2026-09-01). Section 3 would require a defining rule within 180 days; section 5 would rewrite CFPA section 1031(d) with an intent element and a disclosure-based presumption; section 4 would forbid reading discrimination into unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices. It is squarely this ask, and it has never left committee, which is the bottom rung.
  • The withdrawal is attached as Evidence on the not started event under the convention for action that moves the other way: the Mandate wants the terms specified, and the only specification on the books was removed. Read together with #2181, the same notice is a step toward one ask (enforcement only on rulemaking) and a step away from another (a definition), which is why the two items are leveled differently on the same document.
  • The two CRA resolutions were found in the corpus bill list; S.J.Res. 147’s latest action is “Motion to proceed to consideration of measure rejected in Senate” (2026-05-13).
  • The Bureau’s 2026 Regulatory Agenda, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/14/2026-16613/regulatory-agenda, lists one printed entry (the section 1071 reconsideration) and nothing on UDAAP.
Action
restrict
Object
the CFPB’s “deceptive, unfair, and abusive” practices authority
ID
2183