The CFPB Has Returned Billions To Swindled Families. Naturally, Republicans Want It Dismantled

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

Less than a week after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau celebrated its sixth anniversary, the Trump administration issued a decisive blow to the Bureau’s latest progress regarding a key arbitrations rule, which it now aims to nullify.

For Republicans, the CFPB must be curtained like similar government agencies at the helm of President Trump’s deregulation agenda. But the policies championed by the CFPB continue to greatly benefit the average American.

“The question is, why has [the CFPB] drawn so much fire from the Republicans in Washington?” asked CFPB founder Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren at a press conference Tuesday with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “Why is it that the banks and the financial services industry [are] after it day after day after day? I’ll tell you the answer. It’s because it works.”

The CFPB “has provided needed oversight to mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other financial products,” explained Ken Blackledge, a produce farmer and independent voter from Central Iowa. His letter to the editor published in the Des Moines Register on July 25 seeks to emphasize the bipartisan importance of Warren’s agency on the heels of pivotal Dodd Frank reform.

“That little agency has forced the biggest financial institutions in this country to return nearly $12 billion directly to families they cheated,” Warren stated. “It’s handled more than a million complaints. It’s done tough oversight and enforcement, and it’s come out with regulations that—piece at a time—are beginning to level the playing field between giant financial institutions on one hand and American families on the other.”

Watch: