Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans to hold a vote on Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Richard Cordray’s confirmation. It’s no surprise that some Senators—including Illinois’ Mark Kirk—are threatening to filibuster the vote. The vote to overcome the filibuster will happen tomorrow.

For almost two years, the CFPB has protected consumers from dangerous financial products and returned millions of dollars to those who were victimized by them. Yet these Senators are willing to leave consumers more vulnerable to predatory products not because they have issues with Cordray, but because of objections to the structure of the agency.

Last month fair lending advocates cheered when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed new guidance that would require banks under their supervision that offer bank payday or deposit advance products to comply with traditional safe and sound lending practices such as lending only after conducting proper underwriting and considering the borrower's ability to repay the loan.

The proposed rules are the culmination of hard work of advocates across the country at the local, state, and federal level. They could prevent millions of consumers from entering a debt trap, saving them thousands of dollars each year. But they also demonstrate a larger point: federal regulators can do great things when given effective leadership.

The Community Reinvestment Act has been instrumental in promoting investment and financial services in low- and moderate-income communities, but it hasn’t kept pace with changes in the financial industry. We have an opportunity today to let bank regulators know that it’s high time to update Community Reinvestment Act for the modern era. The regulators released proposed changes to their documents that implement CRA (called Interagency Questions and Answers).

We have until May 17 to comment on these proposed changes and let regulators know that they don’t go far enough, so please act today!

Bank regulators released proposed rules on April 30 that, at long last, would enact strong consumer protections for “deposit advance products”—essentially, payday loans offered by a mainstream bank. To hear it from the banks, making sure that borrowers can pay back loans and preventing an endless cycle of debt would somehow make consumers worse off (“Banking group says new regs could push consumers into risky payday loans,” April 28). 

The banks’ arguments are backwards. The fact is, regulators rightly propose to end  the worst practices of an industry that profits off trapping consumers in high-cost debt for long periods of time. Bank payday loans badly needed reform.

Things are different today than they were in 1973.

Unfortunately, the Community Reinvestment Act remains largely the same —and that’s a problem.

We need to update CRA to reflect the realities of the modern banking era. Instead of branch-based banking, many transactions take place online or through networks of brokers. CRA must be changed so that banks have community responsibilities wherever they do business, not just wherever they have branches. And we need stronger ways to hold banks accountable for providing important services--such as affordable checking accounts--to low-income communities.