By CAP Action War Room

 Congress’ Financial Reform Law Is Doing Important Work

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was enacted on July 21, 2010, and signed into law by President Barack Obama

In 2015, Congress’s financial reform law turned five. Dodd-Frank, the massive package of Wall Street reforms passed in the wake of the Great Recession, is massively underrated. The package overhauled the financial sector with the goals of tightening up enforcement and increasing consumer protections.

One major component of the law was the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB—the only financial regulator dedicated to protecting consumers. In its four years of existence, the CFPB has helped return more than $10.1 billion to more than 17 million consumers in addition to protecting Americans from predatory lenders and deceptive mortgage practices.

Despite this extraordinary success at keeping Wall Street responsible and protecting hard-working Americans, the law continues to be under attack. In fact, even though Dodd-Frank isn’t even fully in place yet, Congress has tried 139 times to either amend or repeal parts of the law. And the financial industry has spent $3.25 billion to influence the government in the five years since the law was passed. That means that if financial industry spending in the last five years were a country, it would be the 158th largest economy—bigger than 30 developing nations.

The powerful lobby against the rule has been successful in hamstringing the full implementation of the law. As a part of the package, many regulatory agencies were tasked with creating separate rules and because of the excessive lobbying and infighting, there are still 83 separate rules that haven’t been written yet. Included in the unfinished laws, are important rules like mandating disclosure of CEO-to-worker pay ratios and strengthening the controversial “Volcker Rule.”

BOTTOM LINE: We have Dodd-Frank to thank for the common sense reforms that have helped keep Wall Street accountable and level the playing field between consumers and the financial industry. But despite Dodd-Frank’s success, powerful lobby groups and conservative lawmakers have continued to thwart the law’s implementation.

I Am A Man Ernest C. Withers 22×28″ offset poster ~ Gallery

The night before his assassination on April 16, 1968, Martin Luther King told a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee: “We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through” (King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” 217). King believed the struggle in Memphis exposed the need for economic equality and social justice that he hoped his Poor People’s Campaign would highlight nationally.

I Am A Man, Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis, Tennessee

AFSCME Local 1733 sanitation workers strike in Memphis with National Guard members looking on, 1968. (Date: 1968)

… rights movement are those from the Spring of 1968 as Black sanitation workers went on strike in Memphis, Tennessee holding signs that read “I am a Man …

Civil Rights …  god and nature NOT the government?

kinginstitute.sanford.edu

“You will lose someone…, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss…. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up…. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” – Anne Lamott

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