Tag Archives: Congress

News Release: Committee Majority Lines up with Wall Street in Vote to Roll Back Late Fee Cap

The House Financial Services Committee voted to overturn a regulation capping credit card late fees, putting a majority of its members squarely on the side of big banks that have ripped off consumers for years. The new rule, finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on March 5, would reduce the typical late fee on credit cards from $35 to $8, saving consumers $10 billion each year. For the 45 million households that pay late fees, that amounts to an annual savings of $220.

CFPB

Letters to Congress: Letter in Support of the CFPB

AFR led a letter signed by 84 national, state, and local groups ranging from civil rights, consumer protection, labor unions, antitrust, and general public interest groups voicing our collective support for the work and mission of the CFPB. In the letter we highlight the importance of an agency dedicated solely to consumer protection and the work the CFPB has done to make customers whole after harm was done. We again push back on the agenda to limit the agency’s effectiveness by subjecting the agency to annual appropriations, changing its leadership structure to a commission, and the most recent proposal to raise the asset threshold for companies under the CFPB’s supervision to $50 billion from the current $10 bn threshold. 

Letters to Congress: Letter Opposing H.R. 3556 “Increasing Financial Regulatory Accountability and Transparency Act”

AFR sent a letter opposing H.R. 3556 “Increasing Financial Regulatory Accountability and Transparency Act,” a bill supposedly to make the Fed more transparent, which will instead hamstring the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (“FSOC”) ability to effectively monitor risk in the financial system. This bill would subject the FSOC’s designation authority to Congressional review, which would allow any firm the FSOC designates as systemically important to lobby Congress to rescind the FSOC’s designation. This would render the FSOC designation authority under the Dodd-Frank Act futile and unnecessarily politicize the agency’s efforts to monitor companies that pose an outsized risk to our financial system. This bill comes at the heels of the FSOC’s announcement to reinvigorate its designation process, a welcome step in preventing the next financial crisis.

Letters to Congress: Letter in Opposition to HR 3564

AFR submitted this letter in opposition to H.R. 3564, which would make mortgages more expensive for many middle-class American families. H.R. 3564 would rescind the FHFA’s more equitable mortgage pricing framework and instead require the FHFA to increase fees for many first-time home buyers and those who do not have a 20% down payment.