“What Americans want and will continue to demand is, of course, the exact opposite of what Trump’s tax plan represents. They want to see the loopholes closed and Wall Street paying more, not less. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Keith Ellison have proposed a sales tax on Wall Street transactions; that would be a good start. Working families pay taxes when they buy a car or a pair of shoes.”
“‘The level of venom directed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that is successfully carrying out its mission of preventing tricks and traps that harm American families, is astounding,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, a nonpartisan and nonprofit coalition of consumer and other citizen groups. ‘The changes proposed by the legislation only make sense if you want to weaken consumer protections and make it easier for Wall Street, and predatory lenders, to profit by cheating people.’”
AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst Alexis Goldstein appeared on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday, April 26th to discuss how the Trump Administration’s tax plan would benefit Wall Street and leave ordinary American workers behind. “We have two former bankers from Goldman Sachs announcing a tax plan that–from the details that we do know–will dramatically cut taxes for big banks like Goldman Sachs,” Goldstein said.
“’If the government doesn’t have the powers it needs to liquidate and wind down a failing mega-bank, we will just see banks holding up the taxpayer again during the next crisis,’ Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, said in a statement Friday.”
“As business groups cheered [deregulation] moves, some skeptics were left questioning whether Mr. Trump was keeping his campaign promises to give working-class Americans a higher priority than Wall Street bankers. ‘From our perspective, it is a direction that is dramatically backwards on financial stability,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.’”
“Democrats have already promised to fight attempts to weaken the [CFPB’s] powers. ‘We would have a muzzled watchdog at best,’ said Brian Simmonds Marshall, policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 200 civil rights, consumer- and labor-oriented community groups. ‘You would have an agency that did not have the authorities it needs to protect consumers.’”
“Amanda Jackson, who takes on powerful financial industry forces every day as the Organizing Manager for Americans for Financial Reform, says she’s drawing strength and inspiration from a surge of activism. ‘Trump is forcing people to be more conscious of problems that certain communities have been facing forever,’ Jackson told Inequality.org. ‘There’s no gray area anymore. Either you turn a blind eye to the problems or you answer the call to action. Fortunately, we’re seeing many people answer that call.’”
“The Texas Republican shared a memo with other lawmakers last week outlining changes he plans to make to his so-called Financial CHOICE Act… Impressively, he’s managed to make a bad bill even worse… Marcus Stanley, policy director for the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, said Hensarling’s revised bill ‘makes regulators even weaker than they were before the financial crisis…’ Score that a big win for financial firms after years of filling Hensarling’s pockets with money.”
“‘This latest bill will wind up making regulators weaker than they were before the crisis,’ Marcus Stanley [of] Americans for Financial Reform… told CNNMoney. ‘It’s definitely a shift toward empowering the White House to micromanage consumer protections and enforcement actions.'”
“Sometime in the next few weeks, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to impose stringent limits on the ability of banks and credit card companies to avoid consumer lawsuits. The financial services industry has been screaming bloody murder
‘We’re all preparing for a big fight,’ says Amanda Werner, who has been keeping an eye on the CFPB rule making for the consumer groups Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform.”