Taylor brings more than 30 years of experience fighting for economic and racial justice. She joins Lisa Donner in a new shared leadership structure aimed at enabling AFR to meet the challenge of the moment as billionaires wield unprecedented levels of power.
This week, Republicans in Congress introduced a resolution to undo a Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB) rule that prevents medical debt from capsizing people’s credit scores. More than 100 million people have medical debt and it shows up on the credit reports of 15 million people.
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.
AFR and 24 partners sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee opposing the FIRM Act. The bill purports to curb banking discrimination and enable equal opportunity to obtain financial services. But it would do nothing to prevent actual discrimination or improve access to financial services for people in protected classes.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) appreciates the opportunity to provide written testimony on the role of private equity in the health care sector and the appropriate approaches to curb its monopolistic and predatory practices in the sector. Private equity investments in healthcare facilities and networks lower quality and accessible care.
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.
Christine Chen Zinner at the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform told Checkbook: “Consumers are voters, too.” She encourages “everyday people” to talk to their members of Congress to “elevate this agency into the public consciousness” so that it becomes “a political liability for any member of Congress who thinks it’s okay to continue dismantling the CFPB.”
Americans for Financial Reform along with 17 housing, consumer, civil rights, and labor organizations sent a letter urging the Senate Banking Committee to oppose the nomination of Bill Pulte to serve as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Mr. Pulte’s residential rental real estate investments and private equity background make him uniquely unsuited to lead the FHFA.