Written testimony of Demos President K. Sabeel Rahman before the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law
If we are to survive this crisis—and imagine a more equitable, dynamic economy to come, we must start with a recommitment to the value of universal, inclusive public infrastructure.
“They collect our data without our permission. They profit from our data. They fail to invest in processes to verify accuracy. And their models are not transparent. This puts Black and Brown consumers at a serious disadvantage.”
The Biden administration should implement its public credit registry proposal to shift power away from an oligopoly that exercises inordinate control over consumers’ financial prospects and towards a fairer system that better respects consumers and reduces racial inequality.
Why we need to prioritize passing H.R.1 along with H.R.4 and legislation granting statehood to Washington, D.C. (H.R.51) as the first items of business in the 117th Congress.
The For the People Act can begin to address the longstanding racist exclusions in our democracy with policy solutions that are proven to advance racial equity.
Written testimony of Demos Associate Director of Policy and Research, Amy Traub before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services
"Although credit scores never formally take race into account, they draw on data about personal borrowing and payment history that is shaped by generations of discriminatory public policies and corporate practices that limit access to wealth for Black and Latinx families."
“The government has not asked questions of the banks for this latest bailout—protecting the priorities of banks and shareholders. But for the rest of us, not so much.”
In 2016, a report from the progressive think tank Demosfound that most campaign dollars in local elections were coming from contributors who are white, male and high-income.
"I think Greta has been able to speak truth to power in a way that has resonated with a lot of young people who are frustrated, who have lived their whole lives seeing inaction on climate change."
Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, lenders preying on communities of color would continue to pull in windfall gains, while widening the racial wealth gap and undermining the precarious financial stability of vulnerable households.
The Congressional Black Caucus budget should be implemented because it calls for racial equity in future infrastructure and investments; improving public transit infrastructure, noting that people of color are heavy users of it; and school infrastructure, saying that modernized buildings held reduce achievements gaps.
Even before the Equifax breach, the integrity of credit reports was murky at best. A Federal Trade Commission report found that as many as one in five consumers had a credit error from one of the top reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). But the fundamental problem isn’t data integrity—it’s economic justice. According to a survey by the think tank Demos, declining credit was associated more with misfortunes and unforeseeable crises than with a lack of financial responsibility.
With only the wealthy funding and communicating with the campaigns of elected officials, politicians are incentivized to make policy decisions that align with their donors’ interests, not those of their broader constituency. But the elite donor class holds views that don’t align with the general public’s, as a 2016 Demos study detailed.
Studies have shown that policy most reflects the preferences of the most wealthy members of society and that those preferences do not reflect the greater public opinion on issues including the economy.
For several years, Demos and our partners have been working to fulfill our Constitution’s democratic promise by forging a new legal order that is open to money-in-politics reforms, and marshalling the factual and legal arguments that could help the Court move in this direction.