1. United States
2. R.I.
3. Letter

I am writing to ask Congress to restore, fully fund, and strengthen the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so that it can once again serve as an independent and forceful defender of ordinary people within an increasingly complex and technology-driven financial system. The CFPB was created because responsibility for enforcing federal consumer-financial protections had been divided among multiple agencies, leaving citizens without a single institution accountable for confronting abusive mortgages, deceptive lending, unfair credit practices, unlawful fees, fraudulent financial products, and other forms of economic exploitation. That mission is more necessary now than when the Bureau was established. Everyday citizens are being asked to navigate a financial marketplace dominated by enormous banks, fintech platforms, data brokers, credit-reporting companies, private-equity firms, investment managers, payment applications, artificial-intelligence systems, and technology corporations possessing resources and information far beyond those available to any individual consumer. People are expected to deposit their wages, save for retirement, finance homes, obtain medical care, pay for education, establish credit, and plan for old age through systems they often cannot meaningfully inspect or negotiate. The contracts are lengthy. The algorithms are secret. The data flows are invisible. Responsibility is divided among corporate subsidiaries, contractors, technology providers, banks, brokers, insurers, and investment firms. When something goes wrong, the citizen is told to read the terms of service, submit another dispute, contact another company, wait for another investigation, or accept that an automated system has made a decision no human being can adequately explain. This is not a fair marketplace. It is an imbalance of institutional power. Congress should ask a fundamental question: Where is a government of, by, and for the people when its citizens must confront the most powerful financial and technological institutions in the world alone? Corporate Power and Democratic Inequality Corporations do not literally cast ballots in public elections, but they exercise extraordinary political power through campaign expenditures, lobbying, litigation, trade associations, government contracting, media ownership, and privileged access to policymakers. The result is a political system in which corporate entities and extremely wealthy individuals can often communicate with government continuously, while ordinary citizens are heard primarily during elections, public-comment periods, or moments of crisis. This imbalance becomes especially dangerous when companies influencing legislation also collect, purchase, analyze, and monetize detailed information about the public. Technology companies and data brokers can possess information about people’s finances, purchases, locations, medical concerns, employment, debts, family relationships, political interests, and daily behavior. The Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly warned that the data-broker industry has operated with insufficient transparency and that consumers often lack meaningful knowledge or control over how their information is collected and shared. Recent federal enforcement actions have also demonstrated that sensitive location and consumer information can be bought, sold, or transferred in ways that expose individuals to tracking, discrimination, manipulation, and financial exploitation. Yet the United States still lacks a comprehensive national privacy framework adequate to the scale of contemporary corporate surveillance. Citizens should not live under a system in which private entities know almost everything about them while the public knows very little about how those entities use that information. Nor should billionaires, corporate executives, political appointees, contractors, or private technology firms receive privileged access to sensitive government-held information without strict statutory authority, necessity, auditing, security controls, and public accountability. Government databases contain information entrusted to public institutions for specific lawful purposes. That information belongs within a public trust. It should not become a private commercial asset, a source of political leverage, or a tool for enriching individuals with unusual access to state power. Financial Security Is Not Corporate Property The money people earn is not merely a source of revenue for corporations. It represents labor, time, sacrifice, and deferred need. Workers contribute to retirement accounts with the expectation that those funds will support them when they are no longer able to work. Families place money in banks and investment accounts with the expectation that it will remain available for housing, food, health care, education, emergencies, and old age. Those savings should not be treated primarily as pools of capital to be extracted through excessive fees, hidden conflicts of interest, speculative risk, opaque investment structures, manipulated advice, or self-dealing. Financial institutions and investment managers that control retirement funds should owe enforceable fiduciary obligations to the people whose money they manage. Their first duty should be to savers and beneficiaries—not to executives, affiliated corporations, private-equity owners, political donors, or outside investors. The principle is simple: money entrusted for a person’s retirement should be managed for that person’s retirement. It should not become an instrument for the personal enrichment of those who control the financial machinery. Why the CFPB Must Be Restored The CFPB remains uniquely suited to protect consumers because its mission is focused upon the financial marketplace rather than divided among the broader responsibilities of other agencies. A strong Bureau can investigate patterns of abuse across mortgages, credit cards, student loans, debt collection, credit reporting, payment systems, fintech products, bank accounts, money transfers, and emerging financial technologies. It can collect complaints, identify systemic misconduct, write rules, supervise covered institutions, bring enforcement actions, return money to harmed consumers, and help the public understand increasingly complicated financial products. Without a strong and independent CFPB, enforcement becomes fragmented. Banks may be regulated by one agency, payment companies by another, investment products by another, data practices by another, and emerging technologies by no clearly responsible authority. Corporations can exploit the gaps between those jurisdictions. Consumers cannot. Congress should not permit the Bureau’s statutory existence to conceal the weakening of its practical capacity. An agency that lacks sufficient staffing, reliable funding, independent leadership, investigative resources, technological expertise, or willingness to pursue powerful institutions cannot adequately fulfill its public mission. The CFPB must be more than a website, a complaint portal, or an advisory office. It must possess the capacity and legal authority to stop misconduct before millions of people are harmed. Legislative Action Needed Congress should enact a Consumer Financial Protection Restoration and Independence Act restoring the Bureau’s staffing, funding, enforcement authority, supervisory capacity, research functions, consumer-complaint operations, and technological expertise. The legislation should provide stable, protected funding sufficient to prevent any president or political appointee from disabling the Bureau through attrition, impoundment, delayed hiring, mass dismissal, office closures, or refusal to perform statutory duties. Congress should require minimum staffing and operational standards for the Bureau’s principal functions, including supervision, enforcement, fair lending, consumer response, markets research, regulation,