CRL in the News

Consumer groups today applauded passage of the Consumers First Act. The previous leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recovered over $12 billion in restitution and cancelled debts for over 30 million Americans. Under its new leadership, the CFPB has not lived up to that standard. It has failed to adequately enforce the rules, while advancing a set of proposals...

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is bringing back legislation that takes aim at the big banks by severely curbing their use of overdraft fees. These fees come up when people spend or withdraw more than their available checking account balance, and they’ve become a crucial source of revenue for financial institutions that have long targeted low-income customers who struggle the most...

Education experts hope billionaire Robert F. Smith’s surprise announcement Sunday that he’ll pay the student loan debt for this spring’s graduating class at Morehouse College will be a game changer. “I hope (Smith) starts off a trend,” former Spelman College president Beverly Tatum said Monday. Rising student loan debt has been one of the most troubling issues in higher education...

Advocates from across the country are sounding off on what they say are efforts by the Trump administration to weaken protections against predatory payday lending, which sees borrowers pay skyrocketing interest rates, locking them into an inescapable cycle of debt. Under a rule set to go into effect later this year, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will rescind an...

A coalition of consumer and labor groups is challenging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposal to ease an Obama-era restriction on payday lenders, using language that suggests there are legal grounds to block the new rule. CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger in February introduced the bureau’s proposed plan to effectively unwind regulation imposing underwriting standards on payday lenders, which was originally...

While the 2020 hopefuls have been focused on introducing new legislation, the current administration is working to reverse some existing laws. For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ― an organization established in the wake of the Great Recession to serve as a consumer watchdog ― might soon roll back some Obama-era rules surrounding payday lenders. The Trump administration, which...

Seven out of 10 GOP primary voters are sympathetic to the main ideas of the Loan Shark Prevention Act introduced last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to a Business Insider poll. The legislative proposal would cap the interest rates that credit card companies and payday lenders can charge consumers at 15 percent. The surprising show...

Last week, the Maine House voted on party lines to pass LD 103, which would direct the Department of Education to conduct a review of for-profit colleges and universities to determine whether adequate educational standards are being met. If the for-profit college is not meeting the standards, the state would be authorized to revoke the degree-granting authority of the college...

Ramping up his latest push for the White House, Bernie Sanders is taking aim at high interest rates on credit cards and payday loans. The Vermont senator introduced legislation in May 2019 — along with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — that would cap both rates at 15%. Payday loans are small-dollar advances designed to provide emergency funds. They are typically...

The battle over payday lending — specifically, how tough U.S. federal rule will be in governing the industry — is heating up as an important deadline looms. Letters favorable to the payday lending industry reportedly are flooding in to authorities before the May 15 cutoff for public comment regarding a proposed policy change. At issue are payday lending rules from...