Press Releases

Proposals Attacking CFPB Would Eviscerate Essential Consumer Protections This week, a group of Republican Senators, led by U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-GA), introduced a bill to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) budget come from Congress, instead of allowing the CFPB to receive independent funding as intended when Congress approved its creation in 2010. Additionally, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and U.S. Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX) have introduced legislation this week to completely eliminate the CFPB—an agency that has provided 29 million people who were harmed

Case Granted En Banc Is Essential Step In Maintaining Key Consumer Protections Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) petition to hear PHH Corporation vs. CFPB en banc. This order means that the CFPB can continue to operate as Congress intended during the pendency of the en banc proceeding, and is an important first step toward a decision by the full Court invalidating the panel’s previous and unprecedented 2-1 ruling. (PDF) The CFPB recently challenged the panel’s decision, which undermined the CFPB’s independence to

The United States Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General by a partisan vote of 52-47 this week. On Tuesday evening, Senate Republicans used a procedural maneuver to prevent Senator Elizabeth Warren from reading from the floor of the chamber a 1986 letter from Mrs. Coretta Scott King, who opposed Sessions in his bid for a federal judgeship. Mrs. King had written, “Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts.” Nikitra Bailey, an Executive Vice President

U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-Ga.) introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would repeal new rules on prepaid cards finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) last October. The rules were designed to protect low-income families, many of whom have no bank account and use prepaid cards to handle their financial transactions. CRA is a legislative tool that allows lawmakers to undo federal regulation with a simple majority vote in both the House and Senate. If invoked, CRA prohibits a federal agency—like the CFPB—from rolling out regulations similar to those it

This afternoon, President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order “directing the Treasury secretary and financial regulators to come up with a plan to revise rules the Dodd-Frank law put in place.” Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) Executive Vice President Debbie Goldstein released the following statement: If this Administration has not learned from the mistakes that caused the 2008 economic crisis, they are doomed to repeat them. Lest we forget, lax regulation allowed Wall Street to back extremely reckless loans whose failure snowballed into a financial crisis and Great

Today, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) released statements following the suggestion of the National Economic Council Director that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Director Richard Cordray would be replaced. These developments threaten to leave consumers prone to the types of abusive financial practices that were rampant in the run-up to the Great Recession. Director Cordray was confirmed to a five-year term with the bipartisan support of 66 Senators in 2013. His term ends in July 2018. AFR and the CRL made the following statements:

Today, U.S. Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill to severely weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by dismantling the structure of its leadership. The bill, Consumer Financial Protection Board Act, would turn the CFPB’s leadership into a five member commission where it would be vulnerable to partisan gridlock and halt the progress of making consumer protection a top priority. Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) Policy Counsel Yana Miles released the following statement: This bill underscores

National Consumer Advocacy Groups File Motion to Intervene with DC Circuit and Maintain CFPB's Constitutional Authority to Protect Americans from Wall Street Greed Today in a joint effort, advocate groups including Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), Self-Help Credit Union (SHCU), The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), and Maeve Elise Brown, the Executive Director of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates and Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Consumer Advisory Board

Cost-savings for home buyers purchasing a Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed mortgage loan was eliminated by the first executive order of the new Trump Administration. The move rolls back a premium rate cut of .25 percent that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced early last week, which aimed to save borrowers, especially first-time homebuyers, hundreds of dollars a year on annual mortgage insurance premiums. Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) senior researcher Sarah Wolff released the following statement: The Administration’s actions will make it more

Today, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) released research showing troubling outcomes at Colorado’s four-year for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges leave students with lower graduation rates, higher debt loads, and higher defaults on that debt. These difficulties fall especially heavily on students of color, who are disproportionately enrolled in for-profit colleges in Colorado. CRL analyzed date from the U.S. Department of Education and found the following: The graduation rate at Colorado’s four-year for-profit schools averaged only 26% -- only one out of four students graduate– as