POLL SHOWS VOTERS FAVOR STRONG OVERSIGHT OF WALL STREET

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Has Strong Success Record On First Birthday

Arizona PIRG

Financial reforms enacted in response to the financial meltdown remain popular with those likely to vote in 2012, a new opinion poll by Lake Research Partners shows. The poll was commissioned by AARP, National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and Americans for Financial Reform (AFR). Saturday, July 21, 2012 will mark the two year anniversary of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a new agency with a strong record of successes for consumers despite facing constant political attacks in its first year of work.

“Congress created the CFPB to protect consumers from the hazards of a lack of regulation that caused the financial crisis,” said Diane E. Brown, Executive Director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group (Arizona PIRG). “The CFPB’s record shows strong successes protecting consumers in just its first year, at the same time as polls show the American people want strong financial protections over Wall Street.”

Key poll findings include:

• Voters favor the Dodd Frank financial reform law by a 53-point margin (73-20).
• Voters support the CFPB by a 40-point margin.  
• Two-thirds of voters support a state’s right to pass and enforce stronger consumer protections and preventing federal law from overriding them.

Lisa Donner, executive director, Americans for Financial Reform, said: “The message is unmistakable: Voters across the board are intensely supportive of stronger consumer protections. Strong majorities of voters across party lines say we need tougher rules for Wall Street and they do not want Congress to override a state’s ability to enforce stronger consumer protections at the state level.”

Arizona PIRG and AFR also released a summary of ten key CFPB achievements and priority projects underway. These include:

• The CFPB has protected veterans and other students from high-cost for-profit schools that have made false promises of employment opportunities and otherwise violated laws while also stepping up mortgage and servicing protections for service members who facing problems with their loans because they are required to move.
• This week, the CFPB announced sweeping oversight of the powerful credit bureau industry. Credit bureaus, despite a record of mistake-ridden reports, are self-appointed gatekeepers to financial and economic opportunity.
• The CFPB has established a working complaint handling system that is already getting results for consumers with complaints about mortgages, student loans, bank accounts, car loans and credit cards. The credit card complaint system is the first to be added to a new publicly-available and searchable complaint database.
• CFPB has provided “Know Before You Owe” financial tools for student loans, mortgages and other financial products, to aid students, seniors and other consumers.

“Thus far, the CFPB has accomplished a lot for consumers and it has other important projects underway,” concluded Brown. “Congress needs to listen to the public, not the well-heeled opponents of financial reform, and let the CFPB do its job as America’s first financial agency with only one job: protecting consumers.”