February 8th: No Holiday for Consumers
People who devote their careers to protecting the proverbial “little guy” from grifters, rip-off artists, and those who, as Woody Guthrie put it, rob you with a fountain pen, must have more than a sliver of optimism in their makeup, lest they go insane.
But even for eternal optimists, it’s good to have a smidgen of realism, because some days, that “hope and change-y thing” doesn’t work out.
February 8th, 1978 — 40 years ago today — was one of those days.
On that date, the U.S. House of Representatives voted, 227–189, to defeat the Consumer Representation and Reorganization Act.
At the time, the Act was better known as the Consumer Protection Agency Bill. Imagine today’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but with responsibilities for a much wider set of products and services.
The Consumer Protection Agency Bill could have been the culmination of consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s efforts to give Americans the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness — without worrying whether the toaster they bought was going to catch fire or the annuity they purchased was benefitting the broker more than them. And it was going to help all Americans, not just those who could afford to hire a modern-day version of royal food testers.
The bill had the strong support of both Pres. Jimmy Carter and House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Polls showed that two-thirds of the public supported it as well. And, as National Chamber of Commerce counsel (and future Supreme Court Justice) Lewis Powell wrote, Nader had “become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans.”
That wasn’t nearly enough.
The words that come to mind to describe the forces who united to stop the bill or the cravenness of politicians who caved in aren’t suitable for this blog.
For a raw description, I encourage you to read Ralph Nader’s contemporary post-mortem.
To give you a flavor, here are two excerpts:
“Rep. Charles Bennett, D-Fla., voted for a stronger version of the consumer bill in 1971, 1974 and 1975. Last fall he told me that while he thought well of the legislation, he did not want the Chamber of Commerce types challenging him in a primary. Bennett voted against consumers on Feb. 8.”
“ANOTHER REPRESENTATIVE smilingly said: “If you can get me $100,000 for my next campaign, I’ll tell the business community in my district to go to hell.””
Needless to say, Nader didn’t get him $100,000. Nor should he have had to. And that, of course, was the point of having the agency in the first place.
Advocates learned many lessons from that defeat, some of which helped guide the creation of the CFPB in 2009–10. But, as we’re learning again, while watching Trump-appointed acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney’s anti-consumer actions, reason and facts and broad public support aren’t always enough to create lasting social change.
We need to win hearts and minds across the country, so that representatives from all 50 states will want to punish flim-flam artists hoping the government will turn a blind eye.
Many times before, we’ve done so. That’s why we celebrate happier dates each year, including June 30th (Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906), October 18th (Clean Water Act of 1972), and July 21st (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010).
But given the adage that we learn more from defeat than from victory, every consumer advocate — and, really, every social change advocate — should recognize February 8th each year with a plan to turn the lessons from that dark day 40 years ago into future victories.
