Hillary Clinton is urging fellow Democrats to stand firm in their defense of the young federal consumer-protection agency,

Hillary Clinton is urging fellow Democrats to stand firm in their defense of the young federal consumer-protection agency,  offering a glimpse into her broader financial industry policy expected to be unveiled shortly in her presidential campaign.

In a letter to Democratic House members released Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton expressed her opposition to Republican legislation to alter the leadership structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as efforts to “defund and defang” the agency established after the financial crisis to better protect  consumers in home mortgages, student loans and bank deposit accounts.The Democratic front-runner told legislators to stand firm against Republican efforts to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law – which created the C.F.P.B -  by attaching riders or otherwise taking advantage of the negotiations over the budget and debt ceiling. While most Democrats have opposed the Republican efforts, some have expressed support for the proposed changes.

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has only one mission: protecting Americans from unfair and deceptive financial practices – and it’s succeeding,” Mrs. Clinton wrote. She said that the five-year-old agency has handled over 700,000 complaints and recovered over $11 billion in relief for more than 25 million consumers.  The financial industry and Republican lawmakers see the agency as a symbol of over regulation that raises costs for companies and damps innovation.

In recent months, the bureau’s actions targeting discriminatory lending practices in auto lending have come under attack. At a House Financial Services Committee hearing last week, C.F.P.B director Richard Cordray spent much of his appearance defending the bureau’s practice, as lawmakers criticized the methodology used in investigating possible bias and questioned the authority of the bureau itself, which doesn’t have responsibility over auto dealers. Republican presidential candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have used their campaigns to call for a rollback of Dodd-Frank and the C.F.P.B.

Mrs. Clinton is expected to unveil her broader financial industry policy as soon as this week, a tricky subject for the former New York senator with strong ties to Wall Street who now needs more support of Main Street voters amid slipping poll numbers. One of her rivals for the Democratic nomination, liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has fired up the party’s base with his more blunt, populist attacks on the big banks.

The House Financial Services Committee last week marked up two bills aimed at curbing the influence of the C.F.P.B. One calls for creating an independent Inspector General for the C.F.P.B nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The other aims to replace the current single-director leadership structure with a five-member commission much like the ones seen at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. “We can’t go back to the days when Wall Street could write its own rules,” Mrs. Clinton wrote.