Voters Overwhelmingly Support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Recent Actions
By Kevin Hanley, Cecilia Bisogno, and Lew Blank
In recent years, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — an agency set up after the 2008 financial crisis to regulate mortgages and other consumer finance products to protect consumers from corporate financial abuses — has come under attack from banking interest groups and conservative legislators alike. New polling from Data for Progress demonstrates strong public support for recent actions taken by the CFPB to increase competition in the banking sector and protect consumers from unfair medical billing, misuse of financial data, mortgage lending discrimination, and worker surveillance.
Despite the CFPB’s actions being highly popular, the bureau’s visibility is limited, as a plurality of voters (48%) do not have an initial opinion of the CFPB. Even so, those who do have an opinion overwhelmingly approve of the CFPB across partisanship.
When presented with recent CFPB oversight actions on medical debt, voters reveal wide support for all actions mentioned. The CFPB’s work to reduce abusive medical debt collection practices is the most heavily favored.
More than 8 in 10 voters support the CFPB’s actions to protect Medicare recipients from illegal and inaccurate bills (88%), crack down on illegal medical debt collection practices like misrepresenting consumers’ rights and double-dipping on services already covered by insurance (86%), publish a consumer guide informing consumers of the steps they can take if they receive collection notices for medical bills (84%), and propose a rule to ban medical bills from people’s credit reports (81%).
Similarly, actions taken against abuses in banking and lending are also extremely popular, with a plurality of voters across all demographics strongly supporting every action tested.
At least 8 in 10 voters support the CFPB’s actions to require that companies update any risky data collection practices (85%), rule that banks and other providers must make personal financial data available without junk fees to consumers (85%), confront banks for illegal mortgage lending discrimination against minority neighborhoods (83%), and state that third parties can not collect, use, or retain data to advance their own commercial interests through targeted or behavioral advertising (80%).
After reading a brief description of worker surveillance and the CFPB’s guidance on the issue, a strong bipartisan majority of voters (78%) support the CFPB’s guidance in limiting worker surveillance. College-educated voters (85% support) and voters over 45 (82%) are especially supportive of the CFPB’s stance.
Finally, after voters read more about these recent CFPB actions on medical debt, banking practices, and worker surveillance, their approval of the CFPB grows significantly. By the end of the survey, 3 in 4 voters approve of the CFPB, as most respondents who initially did not have an opinion move to approving of the CFPB after hearing more about recent actions taken by the bureau.
These results clearly show the wide public support for curtailing predatory practices and demonstrates the critical role the CFPB plays in this fight.
Kevin Hanley is a senior analyst at Data for Progress.
Cecilia Bisogno is a methodology engineer at Data for Progress.
Lew Blank (@LewBlank) is a communications strategist at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology
From November 15 to 18, 2024, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,229 U.S. likely voters nationally using webpanel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and recalled presidential vote. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error associated with the sample size is ±3 percentage points. Results for subgroups of the sample are subject to increased margins of error. Partisanship reflected in tabulations is based on self-identified party affiliation, not partisan registration. For more information please visit dataforprogress.org/our-methodology.