AFR sent a letter urging House members to vote “No” on H.R. 3978 — a grab bag of bad legislative ideas that would weaken SEC oversight of Wall Street and undermine consumers, investors rights and protections.
“The administration’s budget and Mick Mulvaney’s ‘strategic plan’ for the CFPB are transparent attempts to stop the agency from doing what it was designed to do: actually protect consumers.”said Lisa Donner, executive director, Americans for Financial Reform.
The Stopping Abuse and Fraud in Electronic (SAFE) Lending Act of 2018 is important legislation that will help safeguard consumers and law-abiding lenders from abuses rampant today in consumer lending.
“Under the Trump administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has become the Payday Predator Protection Bureau,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). “Trump and his allies are blatantly trying to dismantle the bureau from the inside. If this isn’t a crystal clear example of the Trump administration governing of, by, and for the powerful rather than of, by, and for the people, then I don’t know what is.”
“This isn’t the first drastic turnaround for the CFPB under Mulvaney. Last month, the agency canned rules that made it harder for payday lenders to make high-interest loans — and automatically pull funds — from borrowers. ‘Mick Mulvaney wants to let Equifax off the hook for its reckless abuse and negligence that may have a lasting impact on millions of Americans,’ [said] Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.”
It’s one more reason why it’s so important to have someone with a track record of protecting consumers running the CFPB, not someone who wants to destroy its work.
“‘Payday lenders are clearly watching this with bated breath,’ said José Alcoff, manager of the Stop the Debt Trap campaign at Americans for Financial Reform. ‘I think this is clearly a case where the system is getting more and more rigged, where they have, as they say, the fox in charge of the henhouse.’”
“The Trump administration has stripped enforcement powers from a [CFPB] unit responsible for pursuing discrimination cases, part of a broader effort to reshape an agency it criticized as acting too aggressively… ‘These changes . . . threaten effective enforcement of civil rights laws, and increase the likelihood that people will continue to face discriminatory access and pricing as they navigate their economic lives,’ Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, said in a statement.”
AFR sent the below letter to the Federal Reserve commenting on a package of proposals for stress test transparency AFR Comment on Stress Test Proposal Package
Consumer Response has essentially been an independent office housed in the Operations Division. As such, its research on consumer complaint trends has been equally available to all divisions and offices, including, for example, Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending; Research, Markets and Regulations; and Consumer Education and Engagement. Is this transfer designed to diminish the Consumer Response unit’s important role in helping all units of the agency collect and understand the ongoing complaints that consumers raise? What benefit does this transfer provide consumers and will this relocation affect the Complaint unit’s budget?