Pastor Eva Steege planned to meet with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on February 10 hoping to get $15,000 of student debt forgiven. She was under the nation’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that is designed to give loan relief to people who participate in public service.
In Steege’s case she used the money to fund her seminary training.
But the day before her meeting, Steege learned that President Donald Trump – with help from Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency – had taken steps to shut down the CFPB – the agency that was supposed to help her with the Department of Education and eliminate the debt.
To make matters worse, Steege was battling advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was given just six months to live and now lives in hospice care.
“We’re caught in the backwash of what Trump is trying to do with the CFPB… [he] wants to reduce waste fraud and abuse, but there’s no waste fraud and abuse here,” Steege, 83, and her husband, Ted, told The Independent.
Steege, who prior to joining the clergy was a banker, public relations worker and a teacher, is now the sole consumer plaintiff in a lawsuit being brought against the CFPB and Acting Director Russell Vought to challenge the unlawful dismantling of the bureau.
The lawsuit, amended last month to include Steege, states that she “is entitled to discharge her loans under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and the CFPB was helping her do so.”
“Pastor Steege wants to ensure that she discharges her debt before she dies, so that she will not burden her surviving family, and because she could pass on to her family as much as $15,000 of overpayments,” the suit states. “Pastor Steege had a meeting scheduled with the bureau…that was suddenly canceled because of the CFPB’s unlawful closure.
“Absent the CFPB’s assistance, it is unlikely that she will be able to discharge her debt and get her overpayments returned before she passes away.”
Steege joins the CFPB Employee Association, Gupta Wessler LLP, NAACP, National Consumer Law Center, the National Treasury Employees Union, Public Citizen Litigation Group and the Virginia Poverty Law Center in the lawsuit that seeks to halt what the group calls “illegal actions” by CFPB’s appointed and acting officials.
The Independent has reached out to the CFPB for comment on the lawsuit brought by Steege and the other parties.
Steege had struggled to enroll in a federal loan forgiveness plan, operated through the Department of Education.
“I have friends who have zipped right through the process [of enrolling in PSLF], but it still feels like it’s one thing after another that makes this fairly simple thing much more difficult than it needs to be,” Steege told The Independent.
“Add to that, I had a slightly more complicated public service career, but it also feels like they’re almost looking for ways that they don’t have to do this. I know that’s probably not true in the real world, but I can imagine a lot of people thinking, ‘Why on earth do they have a reason for stopping this kind of fairly direct, simple request?’
“I put my original request in in 2022 – that’s a long time – and I’ve filled out all the forms nicely and as precisely as I know how. And yet, there’s some other weird reason why they can’t do this.”
It was only last year that she sought help getting into the program through the CFPB – the agency created after the 2008 financial crisis and designed to protect consumers.
After an initial meeting in January, she was hopeful that she might finally enroll in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, have her loans forgiven and receive a refund. A follow-up meeting was scheduled with CFPB for February 10.
That was until Trump and Musk started making their cuts.
“I guess there’s an odd feeling. It might be my own, it might not be valid, but it feels like one way or another, they’re going out of their way to make this thing worse,” Steege told The Independent.
“One of the Feds’ suggestions even was, can you believe it, that maybe my computer wasn’t working, and I should go to the library or find some other reason why this wasn’t working – that it’s somehow my fault.”
If the CFPB isn’t able to help her, Pastor Steege will spend her final six months “in great duress, worried that she is leaving her family with a financial burden and without the monetary help to which they are entitled” the suit states.
The timing of the suit is somewhat ironic. Trump declared the week of March 2 as “National Consumer Protection Week 2025.”
“Consumer rights are a cornerstone of American freedom, a building block of the American economy, and a foundation of American success,” a Friday press release from the White House read. “During this National Consumer Protection Week, we renew our commitment to protecting the American consumer, upholding the right to privacy and transparency, and ensuring the American economy remains free and prosperous.”
Ted Steege says that his wife’s inclusion in the suit is to show the Trump administration “the damage being done to ordinary citizens” by the attempt to wipe out the CFPB. He says the suit is not about politics, but about “finding the justice” for his wife.
“So long as the Trump administration is willing to wipe out that agency entirely, then it means people like us, and there’s many thousands of them… who are in the middle of trying to get justice that’s due to them, it makes it impossible.
He added: “I certainly don’t object to the government administration looking for efficiencies, but this is a very inefficient way of dealing with the needs of taxpayers… Obviously we’re not in total poverty, and we will survive, but it’s going to be much harder to do that if she’s not getting what she deserves under this program.”
