| Dear Katy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the one Wall Street watchdog completely devoted to protecting Americans from the predatory and abusive financial industry. So of course Donald Trump wants to destroy it. Trump's agent of destruction is Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the CFPB, who previously tried to eliminate the agency he now heads. And Mulvaney just asked Congress to radically restructure the CFPB to put it under Trump's thumb, setting up a massive fight.1 CREDO members stood with Sen. Warren to fight for the creation of the CFPB and to defend it, and now our voices are needed once again. Tell Congress: Don't let Trump destroy the CFPB. Click here to sign the petition. Mulvaney has called the CFPB "a sick, sad joke" and requested a budget of $0 for the entire agency.2 Mulvaney has already curtailed the CFPB's desperately needed payday lending rule, giving a massive handout to predatory and exploitative payday lenders who intentionally trap people in cycles of debt with interest rates in excess of 300 percent.3 Now, his official report to Congress asks legislators to make major changes to the watchdog's structure. Mulvaney wants Trump to have more power over who leads the agency and to force the agency to beg right-wing Republicans for funding instead of having an independent funding base from the Federal Reserve. Also on Mulvaney's wish list is giving Republicans in Congress veto power over any new rule that watchdog puts out.4 His overall goal is to remove the political independence that the agency's creators, like Sen. Warren, thought so essential to it being able to fight Wall Street. We can't let that happen. Tell Congress: Don't let Trump destroy the CFPB. Click here to sign the petition. If you want to know why Donald Trump and Republicans are so desperate to destroy the CFPB, just take a glance at its record: In less than six years the CFPB extracted $12 billion from corporations and returned it to a total of 29 million defrauded Americans. Most of that money was paid in large sums, as in 2015 when the agency forced two debt-buying companies — Encore Capital Group and Portfolio Recovery Associates — to pay $79 million in refunds and penalties to tens of thousands of people the companies had fleeced. The CFPB has also engaged in policymaking, issuing new rules for home-mortgage lenders in 2013 that took aim at banks' pattern of intentionally lending money they know borrowers can't repay, at high interest rates. In 2016, the agency also instituted new guidelines for payday lenders in an attempt to stop loan sharks from targeting desperate people boxed out of traditional financial services due to debt and bad credit.5
CREDO members and progressive allies have successfully defended the CFPB in the past, but now we are needed once again. We cannot let Trump give Wall Street a massive victory. Tell Congress: Don't let Trump destroy the CFPB. Click below to sign the petition: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/mulvaney_cfpb?t=8&akid=28347%2E12967895%2E6-uRpp Thank you for speaking out, Josh Nelson, Co-Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets Add your name: References: - Bess Levin, "Trump official lays out point-by-point plan to screw over consumers," Vanity Fair, April 3, 2018.
- Meagan Day, "The Bankers' Coup," Jacobin, April 2018.
- Levin, "Trump official lays out point-by-point plan to screw over consumers."
- Day, "The Bankers' Coup."
- Ibid.
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