Connecticut Working Families

Dear Senator Dodd,

Congratulations on the passage of the  Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This legislation is a monumental achievement that will dramatically improve the ability of regulators to prevent the next financial tsunami and better protect consumers who have too often been victims of aggressively marketed predatory financial products. Without your forceful leadership, we can’t imagine such a strong and comprehensive bill could have been achieved.

As you well know, ensuring that these new regulations are aggressively and effectively enforced depends on having the right people in leadership positions in all of the relevant regulatory agencies. This is especially true for the new Consumer Financial Protections Bureau. This new regulatory arm must quickly demonstrate competence, independence, and clarity of purpose.

We can think of no person more qualified for this role than Elizabeth Warren. We are writing to urge you to endorse and support Professor Warren for this position with the same tenacity with which you lead the fight for the Wall Street reform legislation.

Professor Warren’s qualifications are well known to you and to everyone who has followed the issue of financial reform. She is universally recognized for her wide-ranging knowledge of consumer financial products and practices, her extraordinary communication skills, and her profound commitment to ensuring that financial products and services are transparent, reasonably priced, and beneficial to consumers.

We find it almost absurd that opponents of her nomination to head the CFPB would base their opposition on the concern that she would not be “balanced” in considering both the perspective of consumers and the perspective of the financial industry. Frankly, the financial industry has benefited from the protection of the Federal Government to an unprecedented degree over the past few years. In establishing an independent CFPB you were correct to point out that the agency must be independent precisely so its mission to protect consumers would not be lost or compromised by a competing mission to ensure the profitability of lending institutions.

We need look no further than the Minerals Management Service to see the inherent danger in a regulatory agency that is designed to balance the public interest with the interests of the industry it regulates. Had MMS been run by someone with the tenacity and integrity of Professor Warren – by  someone who whose focus on protecting the public good was not compromised by a need to ensure the profitability of oil extraction – then perhaps we would not now be witnessing an estimated 2 million gallons of oil per day flooding the Gulf of Mexico.

As the New York Times recently editorialized “Mr. Obama’s choice to head the bureau must demonstrate that he cares more about ordinary Americans than about Wall Street, that he understands that the public interest differs — sometimes sharply — from the interests of big banks.” We could not agree more.

Your record as a champion for working class and middle class families, for consumers, and for the public good is without rival in the Senate. For this reason we hope you will again rise to the occasion and enthusiastically endorse Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Sincerely,

Sal Luciano
Council 4 AFSCME

Jim Horan
Connecticut Association for Human Services

Tom Swan
Connecticut Citizen Action Group

Paul Filson
SEIU State Council, Connecticut

Jon Green
Connecticut Working Families