WASHINGTON–Even though it has been “left for dead,” at least one new report suggests that some parts of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are “crawling back to life.” The Bureau, however, says it’s still on path to firing nearly all its employees.

Although the letters that once spelled out its name above the entrance to its headquarters have been removed and its 1,700 workers sent home, the “consumer bureau has refused to die,” the New York Times reported.

The Times noted that last week the agency’s consumer response team was called back to work to take on a backlog of 16,000 complaints, including dozens from homeowners facing imminent foreclosures. In addition, the Bureau’s Fair Lending Office has resumed preparing its annual report to Congress. And the front page of the agency’s website, which had generated a 404 error message beginning the day Trump administration officials arrived at the CFPB, it is working again, the report said. 

A ’Test Case’

“The consumer bureau is emerging as a test case for the boundaries of President Trump’s power to unilaterally hobble government agencies,” the Times reported. “For nearly a month, the bureau’s staff union and other groups have battled the Trump administration in federal court cases in Washington and Maryland, arguing that only Congress can formally close the bureau, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.”

That only Congress can shutter the Bureau is the same argument some are making as the administration also seeks to shut down the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, as the CU Daily reports here.

“A consent order and series of short-term agreements have temporarily halted, and in some areas reversed, what Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia described as Trump officials’ ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ approach,” the Times added.

Only Partially Open’

However, the CFPB only remains partially open, the Times clarified, pointing out the functions that have been restored are only a small fraction of the agency’s total workload.

The Times added, however, that while financial institutions have opposed the CFPB since its creation, mortgage lender have actually pushed for it to remain open, as the CFPB is responsible for compiling the rate spread calculator  released each week, which lenders need that rate to certify that their loans are in compliance with safe-lending rules.

The mortgage market would freeze if the bureau abruptly stopped publishing it, the Times said, noting the CFPB has restarted the function.

‘Staff Purge’ Planned

However, the overall direction is toward shutting the CFPB down. 

The Times reported that Adam Martinez, an operating official at the bureau carrying out the administration’s mandates, said in court last week that the stop-work order and blueprints for a mass layoff have not been rescinded, and that planning meetings for the staff purge, another bureau official testified, were held as recently as March 6.