Consumer advocates decried the Senate Banking Committee’s passage today of a flawed bill – S. 919, the GENIUS Act – that would legitimize a risky class of crypto assets known as stablecoins and embed them more deeply into the banking system.
The Trump administration has joined a group of big banks in an effort to destroy a vital safeguard against credit card junk fees that would have saved consumers $10 billion per year. As documented by AFR’s Wall Street Ripoff Counter, every day this CFPB rule is not in place, credit card users lose $2.7 million. To date, the bank lawsuit and now the Trump administration actions have cost consumers over $8.3 billion.
EPIC and Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) oppose the Trump Administration’s recent attacks on the CFPB and efforts by Congress to overturn finalized CFPB rules that protect users of payment apps. These attacks put Americans’ privacy and financial wellbeing at risk and threaten to destabilize the financial industry.
The Sycamore Partners $10 billion purchase of drugstore chain Walgreens risks disaster for workers and customers, given this private equity firm’s track record. The private equity takeover of retailers has enriched the Wall Street by extracting dividends, stripping out real estate, and charging astronomical fees that has driven many chains into bankruptcy, shuttered thousands of locations, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and left consumers worse off than before.
Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, led by Chair French Hill, sided with Wall Street banks and against hardworking families by voting on legislation to roll back a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) cap on sky-high abusive overdraft fees at $5.
Senate Republicans voted to give Elon Musk and Big Tech the ability to operate payment apps without any meaningful oversight or accountability, a step that will leave millions vulnerable to financial predators and scammers.