FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Carter Dougherty
Communications Director
Americans for Financial Reform
(202) 251-6700

From Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform:

“The chairman’s opening move in this year’s budget debate might delight Wall Street, but it would make life harder and more dangerous for the rest of us,” Donner said. “His plans would make it easier for big banks and predatory lenders to rip off their customers, and easier for Wall Street billionaires to crash the economy — again.”

— The committee’s input into the congressional budget process calls for the destruction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a remarkably effective regulator that has won almost $12 billion in relief for over 29 million Americans.

— It also attacks the Office of Financial Research, designed to make sure we have a clear and independent view of what is going on in the financial markets, and the process, known as Orderly Liquidation Authority, that prevents bailouts by allowing federal authorities to wind down failing banks without disrupting the financial system.

— The Securities and Exchange Commission, overseer of the nation’s capital markets, would also lose funding and budgeting flexibility.