FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 3/27/2025

CONTACT: Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org  

Senate Majority Betrays Consumers By Siding with Big Banks on Overdraft Fees
Members of the House should stand up for everyday people and reject Wall Street junk fees

Washington, D.C. — The Senate majority advanced the agenda of the nation’s biggest banks by voting for a Congressional Review Act resolution to roll back the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) cap on sky-high overdraft fees. The CFPB safeguard would lower these charges at big banks from $35 to $5, saving families and service members across the nation $5 billion each year, or roughly $225 per household impacted by overdraft fees. 

“Today’s vote is a betrayal of families, service members, and working people who live paycheck to paycheck,” said Patrick Woodall, managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform. “Overdraft fees are nothing more than an attempt by big banks to pad their profits at the expense of consumers.”

The Senate vote was 52-48, with only Sen. Josh Hawley the only Republican voting against the rollback.

Nearly 300 community, consumer, labor, civil rights, and other organizations sent a letter ahead of the vote urging Senators to oppose legislation seeking to repeal the CFPB protections. The resolution will be taken up by the House of Representatives. 

The vote today is another front in the Trump administration’s war on the CFPB, a very popular government agency. The CFPB’s work enforcing federal law and consumer protections has resulted in returning $21 billion in cancelled debts to millions of families cheated by Wall Street, financial institutions, and Big Tech. Since the start of the Trump administration and the seizure of the agency by Elon Musk’s team, the CFPB has frozen dozens of enforcement cases, slowed work to address consumer complaints, and undermined important rules set for implementation this year. 

“Instead of prioritizing policies to lower costs, the Senate majority voted to do the bidding of Wall Street banks at the expense of people in every state and district,” said Woodall “It is unconscionable. We urge the House to reject any effort to repeal the CFPB’s overdraft rule.”

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