Rep. Ron Kind Slams Partisan Effort to Weaken Consumer Protections

Press Release

U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) voted today against a partisan bill (H.R. 3193) aimed at weakening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency dedicated to protecting American consumers and safeguarding against financial abuses.

"The CFPB has a proven record of success in protecting families and small businesses from abuses in the financial marketplace, and ensuring that bank loans, mortgages, and credit card terms are affordable and transparent," said Rep. Kind. "This partisan bill was a blatant attempt to undermine the CFPB, opening the door to another financial crisis where Main Street loses jobs thanks to Wall Street recklessness."

The CFPB, the nation's first-ever independent consumer watchdog andthe only financial regulator focused exclusively on consumer protection has had to endure ideological attacks since its creation. Despite these attacks, the CFPB consistently fulfilled its mission to curb abuses by big banks, payday lenders, debt collectors, credit card companies, and other financial institutions.

Today's anti-consumer legislation, introduced by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), would dramatically interfere with the CFPB's ability to protect consumer interests and make consumer financial markets operate more efficiently. The bill weakens the CFPB's strength and independence by subjecting it to the appropriations process in Congress, effectively defunding the agency. Additionally, it would replace the CFPB's Director with a five-person commission, striking at its ability to act quickly and effectively, and would make it easier for other banking regulators to overturn the CFPB's rules.

"I had hoped that some of my colleagues in Congress would have learned from the mistakes of the past that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," concluded Rep. Kind. "Having commonsense rules in place to protect consumers from financial abuses, and making sure those rules are enforced, should not be partisan issues."

Since its creation in 2010, the CFPB has created safer national mortgage standards, improved disclosure requirements so that consumers are better informed, secured more than $3 billion for almost 10 million consumers who were impacted by financial abuses, and created a national consumer complaint center that has handled nearly 270,000 consumer complaints.

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