Civil and Human Rights Coalition Decries House Bill to Gut the CFPB

WASHINGTON – Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president and director of policy at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement in response to today’s House Financial Services Committee’s hearing on the “Financial CHOICE Act of 2016,” a bill that would repeal many of the financial services industry reforms enacted following the 2008 financial crisis. The Leadership Conference is particularly concerned about provisions that would drastically weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which is now the nation’s most important watchdog over predatory or discriminatory lending practices:

“In the years before the mortgage crisis brought our economy to its knees, federal banking regulators failed to look out for consumers. When the bubble burst, the need for a strong, independent consumer finance regulator – the brainchild of now-Senator Elizabeth Warren – became clear. Through an unusually deliberative and transparent legislative process, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ensure that common-sense consumer protection laws – like requiring lenders to make sure that borrowers can actually repay the loans they’re given – would finally be enforced at the federal level in a meaningful way.

The bill considered at today’s hearing represents a failure to learn from the mistakes of the past and a stubborn insistence on making them all over again. It would eliminate the independence of the CFPB, leaving it at the mercy of high-powered financial services lobbyists and their allies in Congress, and less responsive to ordinary consumers. It would let payday lenders continue to make deceptive loans that trap consumers and milk them for as much as 400 percent a year in fees. And it would open the door to many new high-cost and deceptive practices in the future.

We sincerely hope that today’s hearing was the last we will hear of this profoundly misguided proposal.”

Nancy Zirkin is the executive vice president and director of policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

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