Bipartisan Bill To Stop Bad Robocalls Advances in the House

The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee gave voice vote approval earlier this week to legislation (H.R. 3375, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act) designed to “end the robocalls epidemic.” In advance of the vote, CFA and other privacy organizations sent a letter in support of legislation to Energy and Commerce Committee members.

The letter highlights a number of ways in which the act will strengthen protections for Americans including provisions:

• giving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the ability to prohibit most unwanted calls, including those from telemarketers and debt collectors;
• limiting the ability of callers who have violated the law to obtain retroactive waivers of liability from the FCC, better ensuring that they comply with the law in the first place;
• helping to stop most of the repeated wrong number calls, especially from debt collectors;
• strengthening the FCC’s ability to stop scam and illegal telemarketing calls;
• restoring trust in the information on caller ID; and
• limiting the cost of call-blocking technologies.

“Americans are sick and tired of robocalls and demanding action,” said Susan Grant, CFA Director of Consumer Protection and Privacy. “We want effective solutions, and we shouldn’t have to pay to protect ourselves from calls that we shouldn’t be getting in the first place.”

Companion Bills Introduced To Improve Crib Safety

Bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate to ban the manufacture, import or sale of crib bumper pads, dangerous products that have no place in a safe sleep environment or on store shelves, according to CFA and other child health and consumer advocacy groups.  The groups issued a statement in support of the companion bills, H.R. 3170 and S. 1816, which were introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) in the House and by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) in the Senate.

“As leading child health and consumer advocacy organizations, we are proud to support H.R.3170 and S.1816, the Safe Cribs Act. For almost a decade our organizations have warned parents against using crib bumper pads and supported state and local actions to ban their sale. This legislation would help prevent more families from experiencing the tragedy of losing a child to crib bumper pads by banning their manufacture, import, and sale altogether,” they stated.

Dozens of deaths have been attributed to positional asphyxia or suffocation involving these products. But they still appear on store shelves where new parents or grandparents assume they are safe – in fact many assume they are a safety product – and end up making their child’s sleep space dangerous.

The groups urged Congress to advance the Safe Cribs Act without delay.  They also urged the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to immediately call on retailers and manufacturers to stop selling bumper pads, as they did in the past for a similar product, infant sleep positioners.

“Bumper pads pose risks to babies and this legislation will save lives by preventing bumper related tragedies,” stated Rachel Weintraub, Legislative Director and General Counsel with Consumer Federation of America.

CFA Opposes Proposed Cutbacks in HMDA Reporting

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has proposed rulemaking that would unnecessarily reduce the scope of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) coverage, ignores the invaluable information HMDA has provided on credit flows in U.S. communities, and should not be adopted, CFA Director of Housing Policy Barry Zigas argued in comments earlier this month opposing the cutbacks.

The rule would reduce the scope of HMDA reporting by raising the threshold for lenders from 25 closed end loans to 50 closed end loans. The Rulemaking also asked for comments about expanding the threshold further, to 100 or 250 loans.

“It is premature to make these changes given that the data from 2018, the first year of reporting the expanded dataset, has yet to be publicly released,” Zigas argued in his comment letter. Moreover, the alleged costs of compliance cited as a key reason for the changes are modest and do not justify the dataset’s diminution.

If adopted, the changes would leave important and large gaps in HMDA’s coverage, especially in rural areas, leaving regulators, community organizations, state and local governments, and researchers with incomplete information on which to make important decisions, Zigas stated. It would also leave the lending practices of smaller institutions largely unmonitored, further exacerbating researchers’ and others’ ability to understand the flow of credit, he added.

Zigas noted that lenders already collect all of the data required by HMDA reporting; that they have had nearly a decade to plan for reporting of new data fields mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010; and that the costs cited in the rule, an average of around $2000 per affected institution, do not justify the reduction in available information about credit flows that would result.

When the CFPB issued the final rule that currently governs reporting requirements, the agency concluded that, “if it were to set the closed-end coverage threshold higher than 25, the resulting loss of data at the local level would substantially impede the public’s and public officials’ ability to understand access to credit in their communities,” Zigas noted. He added that minority communities were hardest hit by the predatory and unsustainable mortgage practices that led up to the Great Recession, and that the new data fields were meant in large part to provide regulators and others information that could have signaled the pending crisis much earlier.

“Had the new HMDA data fields been available in 2000, regulators, researchers, and advocates would have seen the patterns of discriminatory and predatory behavior as they were building during the next five years and could have taken earlier steps to shut it down. Having learned this lesson in the very hardest way, the Bureau should resist industry complaints and hold firm in the thresholds it adopted in the current rule,” Zigas concluded.

House Challenges Trump Rollback of Fuel Economy Standards

The Trump Administration’s proposed rollback of fuel economy standards would cost consumers hundreds of billions and hit low-income consumers, who can least afford spending more on gas the hardest, CFA Executive Director Jack Gillis and Director of Research Mark Cooper warned in written testimony provided earlier this month to a joint hearing of two House subcommittees in which members of Congress grilled administration officials on the ill-advised plan.

In their testimony, Gillis and Cooper emphasized seven key reasons the fuel economy standards should not be rolled back:

1. The current standards save consumers money. They have already saved consumers $500 billion. When Macroeconomic, environmental, health, and other benefits are included, the savings increase to almost $900 billion.
2. If the standards are rolled back, consumers will be robbed of $4,500 per household in savings and the country will see $200 billion in macroeconomic, environmental, health, and other benefits disappear.
3. Low-income consumers, who primarily buy used vehicles, benefit the most from the standards and will pay dearly if the rollback is implemented. Under the current standards, low-income consumers would save over $900 during the typical six years that they own their used vehicles.
4. Contrary to Administration claims, the fuel economy standards do not threaten vehicle safety. By irrationally doubling the estimated increase in driving due to lower driving costs, ignoring advancements in vehicle crash safety, and disregarding the adoption of advanced safety features, the agencies grossly miscalculated the number of lives they claim could be saved by rolling back the standards. They were wrong on three key points: improved fuel efficiency will not result in Americans dramatically increasing their driving; vehicles have become safer (and new safety features will continue to be added) since the standards were implemented in 2012; and, savings due to the standards have more than paid for the safety improvements.
5. The standards are achievable. CFA has analyzed new vehicle introductions over the last five years and found that automakers have been complying with, and in many cases, exceeding the standards.
6. Automakers will be at a severe disadvantage domestically and globally if the standards are rolled back. Automakers won’t be able to sell their less efficient (but U.S. compliant) vehicles in other countries with stricter standards, or in 40 percent of the United States, where 14 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the California Clean Car Standards.
7. Consumers support the standards. According to a recent CFA survey, a consistent, significant, and strong bi-partisan majority of consumers support the current fuel economy standards. Also, when asked what they would like their next vehicle’s fuel economy to be, the average response was 41 MPG, which is slightly above the current target for the current standards.

“We are calling on the members of Congress to take every step possible to prevent the Trump Administration from rolling back the standards which are the product of one of the most elegantly drafted regulations in U.S. history,” said Gillis. “Rarely has a standard been implemented which addresses the needs of every stakeholder. The 2012 effort: 1) respects the fact that some manufactures make and sell big vehicles and others sell small vehicles; 2) does not dictate what manufactures have to sell; 3) keeps U.S. manufactured vehicles domestically and globally competitive; 4) saves consumers billions of dollars; 5) reduces our dangerous dependence on foreign oil; 6) helps sell vehicles; 7) benefits the environment; and 8) is eminently achievable. Furthermore, they were agreed to by one of the most diverse set of stakeholders in regulatory history including the car companies, unions, consumer groups, scientists, and environmentalists,” added Gillis.

Scenes from CFA’s Annual Awards Dinner

The Consumer Federation of America hosted its 49^th annual CFA Awards Dinner last week to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to advancing the consumer interest and advocating on behalf of consumers nationwide. At the dinner, we were joined by Senator Sherrod Brown, Representative Debbie Dingell, Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Representative Jan Schakowsky who presented the awards to this year’s award recipients: Representative Frank Pallone; Jackie Gillan, President Emeritus of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety; Beverly Brown Ruggia, Financial Justice Organizer for New Jersey Citizen Action; and investigative reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, Stephanie Zimmermann. We are looking forward to next year’s historic 50^th Awards Dinner.