Voters across all political parties are broadly and intensely supportive of strong consumer financial protections and of tough regulation of the financial services industry. This sentiment extends not only to keeping existing measures in place but expanding on what Congress did a decade ago, and has proved durable throughout the period since the 2008 financial crisis, through the weak recovery that followed and into the searing recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In its proposed rule, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger is sanctioning consumer harassment by allowing debt collectors to: call consumers seven times per debt, per week; send unlimited emails, texts, and social media messages without consumer consent; allow debt collectors to collect very old “zombie debts” where the time to sue has expired; and file baseless lawsuits by making it easier to sue the wrong consumer, for the wrong amount.
A new polling memo from Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending documents the widespread agreement among American voters that the student debt burden, now at $1.5 trillion, is a crisis.
Voters of all political parties overwhelmingly oppose the actions taken by Mick Mulvaney to undermine the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and feel a strong connection between lax enforcement of the rules on Wall Street and their daily welfare. Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis brought on a searing recession, the survey revealed enduring, strong, and bipartisan support for tougher regulation of Wall Street and predatory lenders.
A new nationwide survey of likely 2018 voters in key battleground congressional districts reveals overwhelming, broad-based, and intense support for curbing big banks’ influence in Washington, including solid backing for a Financial Transaction Tax, especially if it’s referred to as a “sales tax”.
Across parties and regions, American voters believe the government should fight discrimination by financial firms against African-Americans and Latinos in lending.
