Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), informed his staff that he would be shutting down the bureau’s Office for Students and Young Consumers and folding it into the Office of Financial Education. In response, Mark Huelsman, Senior Analyst and student debt expert at Demos, issued the following statement:
Chiraag Bains, the Director of Legal Strategies for Demos, issued the following statement tonight in response to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Trump:
“With the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court in less than two years, the stakes couldn’t be higher for individuals and families whose lives are directly impacted by the Court’s decisions.
Today, Democratic members of the House of Representatives released the Aim Higher Act, a bill that would reauthorize the Higher Education Act, the federal law which authorizes a broad range of student aid programs and governs the federal role in higher education.
Demos, a public policy organization based in New York, has this response:
Facebook’s decision to hire a right-wing consulting firm to plant false stories about Color of Change and others who dared to call out Facebook was a nefarious smokescreen to save themselves from well-deserved criticism about the online platform and its business practices.
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a package of rules that include a “pay-as-you-go” or “PAYGO” provision, which mandates that new spending be offset by matching cuts or increases in revenue. Demos supports efforts to eliminate PAYGO requirements in federal law.
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a pair of decisions affirming campaign finance disclosure provisions in Maine and Rhode Island. I let out a sigh of relief when I read them.
One grievance of the protesters targeting Wall Street is that financial elites wield way too much power in our democracy. That complaint is hardly new, but the latest figures on money in politics tells a truly troubling story about the vast resources that Wall Street has put into shaping both the legislative process and elections.
Last month, the White House introduced a program that would effectively overhaul the tax code and, as Robert Kuttner put it, "locked [Obama] in as a defender of social insurance and working Americans." The five-pronged tax plan would cut rates and inefficient and unfair tax breaks, increase investment and growth in the United States, reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and -- most contentiously -- institute the "Buffett rule."
Occupy Wall Street has already accomplished a great deal by shifting public discourse in this country. Instead of focusing on the need for austerity and deficit reduction, attention is rightly being directed at economic disparities and the deep structural problems that the United States faces.
Blatant redistribution, the argument goes, may fly in Europe with its strong class identity, but is a non-starter here, where the value of individual self-reliance is dominant. Is this really true?
NYPIRG released a report last week of the largest donations in New York state politics over the past year. The numbers, while no longer surprising, mirror the disturbing state of campaign spending at the federal level, and they raise some important questions about the underlying institutions necessary for democratic elections and political accountability.