Siding With 'Loan Sharks' Over Consumers, Trump CFPB Moves to Gut Payday Lender Regulations

In what progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups decried as the Trump administration’s latest “shameful” attack on vulnerable families, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would gut regulations protecting consumers from predatory payday lenders.

“This decision will put already struggling families in a cycle of debt and leave them in an even worse financial position.”
—Vanita Gupta, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, denounced the CFPB’s plan as “a slap in the face to consumers—especially people of color—who have been victims of predatory business practices and abusive lenders.”

“This decision will put already struggling families in a cycle of debt and leave them in an even worse financial position,” Gupta added. “This administration has moved the CFPB away from protecting consumers to protecting the very companies abusing them.”

Detailed in a statement by Trump-appointed CFPB director Kathy Kraninger, the agency’s proposal would dramatically weaken an Obama-era rule that would have required payday lenders to verify that borrowers have the financial ability to repay their loans—an effort to help vulnerable people avoid falling into debt traps.

“Eliminating these protections would be a grave error and would leave the 12 million Americans who use payday loans every year exposed to unaffordable payments at interest rates that average nearly 400 percent.”
—Alex Horowitz, Pew Charitable Trusts

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