What you can do to keep Wall Street in check

Under the Trump administration, this is what consumer protection looked like: $1 fines for rule-breaking banks and leaving Wall Street regulation in the hands of anti-regulation insiders. But that all could change soon.

The Biden administration has nominated Rohit Chopra, a true champion for consumers, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Chopra helped build the Consumer Bureau from the ground up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and if confirmed, he would revitalize the bureau that Trump had left toothless.

But we’ll need every Senate vote we can get to confirm him. Tell your U.S. senators to confirm Rohit Chopra as CFPB director.

The Consumer Bureau was created to protect consumers from the sorts of abuses and reckless industry behavior that had first precipitated the Great Recession. During its first six years in the Obama administration, the CFPB was responsible for returning $12 billion to consumers.

But in 2017, the Trump administration turned the CFPB’s mission on its head. Over the past four years, it rolled back key protections for consumers and put supporters of Wall Street deregulation in charge of regulating Wall Street.

In one of the most glaring examples of this behavior, a task force created in 2019 to oversee financial regulations was packed with people representing the interests of the financial industry.

With Chopra at the helm, we have a chance to restore the Consumer Bureau. Tell your U.S. senators: Confirm Rohit Chopra.

With Rohit Chopra’s nomination, we have a chance to restore the CFPB to its original mission.

He has a tested track record at the CFPB. In the agency’s earliest days, he served as its first student loan ombudsman, where he spoke out against ballooning student loans. And in a Senate hearing on March 2, he promised that a CFPB under his leadership would make corporate offenders pay for defrauding consumers.

Recognizing the impending scrutiny banks are about to face, financial interests are highly motivated to block Chopra’s confirmation. That’s why we’re equally motivated to get him through the door.

We need every vote we can get. Tell your senator: We need Rohit Chopra at the CFPB.