Majorities of American voters across parties believe that the student debt burden – now at $1.5 trillion – represents a crisis for the country, according to a new poll. The survey also found widespread concern with efforts by Mick Mulvaney, the Trump official installed at the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to gut the agency’s student lending office.
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.
Ten Years after the 2008 Financial Crisis, Where Do We Stand? A conference with Sens. Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren and regulators who helped respond.
Brett Kavanaugh’s ruling, later overturned by the full DC circuit, that an independant CFPB is unconstitutional, is but one powerful indicator of the danger he would pose as a Supreme Court justice. Stripping financial regulators like CFPB of their independence means weaker consumer protections.
There was no evidence before her confirmation hearing that Kathy Kraninger would champion the interests of consumers, and there’s no evidence of it afterwards either.
Kavanaugh found that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional but was overturned in a thoughtfully reasoned decision that found many faults with his analysis. Independent agencies, which have existed in the United States for nearly a century, are vital institutions for creating a government that does not only serve wealthy interests.
The President should have nominated someone with a commitment to that mission months ago, not waited until the last minute to reveal a nomination designed to keep Mick Mulvaney in charge. This nomination is a move to keep the CFPB hobbled and under the thumb of the payday lenders and Wall Street law breakers.
Mick Mulvaney has been doing the bidding of payday lenders for years, but putting the CFPB’s weight behind a joint legal motion with their lobbyists is a new low, even for him. Mulvaney is now openly making common cause with payday lenders to gut the CFPB’s common-sense protections for borrowers
“Congress has done the right thing in allowing the rule to stand. Now the spotlight is on Mick Mulvaney. Will he move ahead on his plans to unravel it, and continue to cater to the payday lenders who gave generously to his campaigns?” said Lisa Donner, executive director at AFR.