Today, CREDO Action, Americans for Financial Reform, Public Citizen, USAction and USPIRG delivered petitions in which more than 200,000 Americans told Congress not to let the budget process be used as a vehicle for backdoor financial deregulation.
“We welcome the news… that 1,312 former students of Heald College – part of predatory for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. – will finally see the debt cancellation they have long been promised. But we remain gravely concerned by the Department’s unjustifiably narrow approach to debt cancellation, which if it continues unchanged may leave hundreds of thousands of students burdened with debts foisted on them by deceptive and abusive practices.”
“In late November, a bipartisan group of members from Florida’s congressional delegation filed a bill in the House of Representatives that would exempt the state’s payday loan industry from national rules aimed at ending abusive low-dollar lending. The bill would delay implementation of any rule for two years after it was issued and then exempt not only Florida but also other states that adopt Florida’s sham regulatory model.”
Congress must resist temptation to give in to powerful corporate lobbyists that seek to use the country’s budget process to eliminate a much-anticipated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rulemaking that would ensure consumers have access to court when cheated or ripped off, consumer advocacy groups said today. A group of industry representatives that includes the American Bankers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent letters to members of Congress this week encouraging them to add a harmful rider to the contentious spending bills that would disregard the CFPB’s multi-year, data-driven study and analysis on the use of forced arbitration clauses in the fine print of financial contracts.
“Yesterday the Federal Reserve issued its final rule on emergency lending. In response to bipartisan criticism of the 2013 proposal from, among others, Senators Elizabeth Warren and David Vitter, Representative Jeb Hensarling, and Americans for Financial Reform, the Federal Reserve has significantly modified its initial proposal.”
The House of Representatives passed two ill-advised financial deregulation bills on November 18th. Both are giveaways to some of the country’s biggest banks. Both, if they ever became law, would mark a dangerous retreat from the financial reforms put in place after the financial crisis.
“Supporters of the “Reforming CFPB Indirect Auto Financing Guidance Act,” which passed by a vote of 332 to 96, have tried to hide behind a smokescreen of baseless questions and false claims supplied to them by industry lobbyists. But the clear intent of this bill is to block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from taking action to combat lending practices that lead to African-American as well as Hispanic and Asian-American borrowers being charged higher interest rates on auto loans.”
ColorOfChange, Working Families, Center for Popular Democracy and Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) delivered over 50,000 petitions urging Congress not to pass H.R. 1737, which would block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from working to fight discrimination in car loans.
“These deregulatory measures are on the committee’s docket only as a result of massive lobbying by large financial institutions seeking a license to continue playing the kinds of heads-they-win-tails-we-lose games that were at heart of the financial crisis. Lawmakers need to decide whether to let the financial industry have its way or stand up for the public interest.”
With a government shutdown narrowly averted and budget negotiations moving into a potentially volatile final stage, more than 160 national, state and local organizations are telling lawmakers and the Administration not to let the process be used to force through ideological spending riders that would block financial reform or undermine the funding or authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.