Letters to Congress Archives - Page 25 of 48 - Americans for Financial Reform

Joint Letter to Congress: 50+ Organizations Urge Congress to Keep Rules That Protect Students and Taxpayers from Waste and Fraud in Higher Education

“We believe protections for student and taxpayers should be strengthened, not scaled back. …Veterans, low-income students and students of color have been disproportionately harmed by predatory colleges. Last month, 16 organizations representing millions of military servicemembers, veterans, survivors, and military families voiced their strong support for these protections and urged Congress to fully uphold them.”

Written Testimony: The CFPB’s Structure is Constitutional and Effective

“The first five-and-a-half years of the CFPB’s history has vindicated the decisions that Congress made in 2010 to create a strong independent agency to protect consumers from fraud and abuse in the financial marketplace. …It’s action have begun to reform the industry by making banks andother financial services companies more attentive to consumers’ rights…”

Letter to Congress: AFR Criticizes Securities Bill Package As Tilted to Wall Street

AFR sent letters to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee regarding a package of securities bills up for a vote. AFR supports H.R. 1366/S. 484, “The U.S. Territories Investor Protection Act”, and opposes H.R. 910 / S. 327 “The Fair Access

Letter to the Senate: 88 Organizations Oppose Steven Mnuchin for Secretary of the Treasury

We, the undersigned organizations, representing millions of Americans, are writing to urge you to oppose the nomination of Steven Mnuchin as Secretary of the Treasury.

Letter to Congress: Oppose HR 78 The SEC Regulatory Accountability Act

“This legislation is transparently an effort to paralyze the SEC and to empower Wall Street lawyers to overturn its decisions, not to improve its analysis or decision making. …The most prominent new requirement would mandate that the SEC identify every “available alternative” to a proposed regulation or agency action and quantitatively measure the costs and benefits of each such alternative prior to taking action. …In addition to the enormous task of identifying and analyzing every available alternative to a course of action, the agency would be required to perform half a dozen new analyses in addition to its current requirements concerning market efficiency, competition, and capital formation. These new requirements include analyses of effects on small business, market liquidity, state and local government, investor choice, and “market participants”. Notably, no new requirements concerning the protection of investors or preventing another financial crash are included. …We urge you to reject it.”

Letter to Congress: Oppose HR 238 The Commodity End User Relief Act

“By freezing the CFTC’s funding at its current inadequate level for the next five years, this legislation exacerbates the agency’s most fundamental problem – a lack of resources to accomplish its mission. After the 2008 financial crisis, the CFTC became newly responsible for hundreds of trillions of dollars in previously unregulated swaps markets. …Even as it fails to address the pressing problem of funding, HR 238 would also load down the CFTC with additional mandates that would drain resources and act as a roadblock to necessary oversight and enforcement.

Letter to Congress: AFR Opposes REINS Act (HR 26)

“The REINS Act is radical legislation that would upend decades of administrative law practices dating back to the New Deal era in the 1930s. The bill requires explicit approval of any ‘major regulation’ by both the House and Senate within 70 days in order for that rule to take effect. This requirement would create crippling barriers to administrative actions necessary to protect the public and implement the law.”

Letter to Congress: Twenty Leading Public Interest and Labor Organizations Oppose HR 6392

AFR joins 19 other organizations to express our opposition to H.R. 6392, the “Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act of 2015.” This legislation increases the likelihood of big bank failures that could put at risk the economic security of millions of families.

Letter to Congress: Oppose HR 6392 — This Legislation Endangers the Economy

“Far from improving systemic risk regulation, this legislation increases the likelihood of big bank failures that could put at risk the economic security of millions of families. It puts unprecedented new constraints on the ability of the Federal Reserve to provide basic oversight of large bank holding companies, including provisions that grant an unaccountable council of international regulators statutory powers over U.S. regulatory decisions. It would also politicize bank regulatory decisions, granting the Treasury Secretary of the incoming Administration new powers to pick and choose which big banks must follow basic safety rules.”

Joint Letter to Congress: 304 Organizations Say No Backdoor Giveaways to Wall Street

“The budget is not the place to try to force through provisions that are dangerous to economic stability or to families economic security, would not pass alone, or that the President would likely veto. We strongly urge Members of Congress to oppose any flawed funding proposals that undermine the CFPB, the Dodd-Frank Act, the DOL’s conflict-of-interest rule, or other financial reform and accountability legislation or regulations.”