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Stop the Debt Trap Statement: Mulvaney, Predatory Lenders Signal Plan to Kill Payday Lending Rule

“This move shows the level of influence that payday lenders have over Mick Mulvaney, who for years received campaign contributions while a member of Congress. With today’s announcement, Mulvaney is sending an unmistakable signal that he wants to kill this common-sense regulation.” Payday loans “trap borrowers in an unaffordable cycle of debt, causing severe financial harm such as bank penalty fees, delinquency on other bills, or even bankruptcy. There is no reason to reopen the rule, and doing so shows disdain for consumer protection and low-income communities that are targeted by these debt trap loans.”

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AFR Fact Sheet: Wall Street and the Tax Bill

The briefing paper linked below uses Penn-Wharton and IRS data to show how the financial sector is a big winner from the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, with almost $250 billion in tax benefits over the next decade flowing to financial firms

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AFR Statement: DeVos’s Education Departments is Predatory Companies First, Students Last

“The news of the Department’s scheme to grant only partial relief to scammed students is just one more piece of an abundance of evidence that the Trump Administration and the DeVos Department of ED care more for the proprietary institutions that break the law than they do for the students they defraud,” said Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for a Financial Reform. “For Secretary DeVos, it’s predatory companies first, students last.”

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AFR/TOWS Statement: Unpopular, Harmful Tax Cuts Reward Wall Street Donors

At a time when millions of everyday Americans are struggling with stagnant wages, Republicans decided to use the tax code to reward its contributors. Polls have shown that the Republican tax bill is deeply unpopular. Voters recognize it for what it is: a giant holiday gift to Wall Street and the super rich that the rest of us will be paying off for decades.