By CAP Action War Room

Five Years In, Congress’ Financial Reform Law Is Doing Important Work

Congress’s financial reform law turns five today. 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.

“Thanks to the ADA, the places that comprise our shared American life — schools, workplaces, movie theaters, courthouses, buses, baseball stadiums, national parks — they truly belong to everyone.”

 Tell Rite Aid to stop using unsustainably sourced paper in its throwaway flyers.

Cyclone Devastates Island Nation Vanuatu

There are 8 confirmed deaths and dozens more are feared dead as a result of Cyclone Pam’s destruction of Vanuatu. But it could take days or even weeks to reach the most remote parts of the island nation and see the extent of the devastation. Please give now and help their recovery. Category Five Cyclone Pam devastated the entire Pacific island nation of Vanuatu on Saturday, leaving its 267,000 residents in crisis. Please donate now and help our team on the ground bring immediate relief to the people of Vanuatu and where it’s needed most around the world. “Homes have been blown to pieces and even evacuation shelters, where people had sought refuge, have been flooded and left exposed to Cyclone Pam,” said Charlie Damon, program manager for CARE International in Vanuatu. “If this is the level of impact in communities where emergency shelters were an option, we are deeply concerned about what has happened in remote communities without them.” CARE is helping the Vanuatu government assess the level of destruction and the most immediate relief needs. We will deploy specialists in clean water and sanitation, shelter and food to support staff on the ground and to plan for the longer-term recovery process. But we need your help. please give now and we’ll respond to the physical and emotional needs of those people impacted by Cyclone Pam and other survivors of disasters, war and extreme poverty around the world. My sincerest thanks, Helene D. Gayle, MD, MPH

On November 4, we took the biggest — and toughest — step forward, yet.

When Washington State said Yes to 594, we showed reformers across the nation that they can not only fight — but also beat — the gun lobby at the ballot box and bring commonsense reforms to our gun laws.

The truth is that we couldn’t have done it without your support, which kept us going through the attacks and a tough campaign.

But we’re not done yet. There’s so much left to do to reduce gun violence here in Washington.

Moving forward, we here at The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility will be working closely with the Center for Gun Responsibility to continue educating the public and helping pass commonsense gun laws that will make us all safer.

And now, it’s time for our lawmakers to do their job and stand up for commonsense gun laws.

What can you do in this new phase? We want to know what you believe we should focus on during Washington’s next legislative session.

Take our quick one-question survey, and let us know what you think our top legislative priorities should be for reducing gun violence and making our communities safer.

The people of Washington have done their part to reduce gun violence at the ballot box, and now it’s our legislators’ turn to do theirs.

Thanks for your help,

Zach Silk
Campaign Manager
Yes on 594