Printer-friendly version
By Miriam Raftery
March 4, 2016 (Washington D.C.) – Battle lines have been drawn over an income inequality issue in Congress. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who heads up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was appointed by President Barack Obama, has been fighting for regulations to regulate the payday lenders.
Her efforts have been opposed by Republicans who took contributions from the payday loan industry. But now Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would delay the consumer bureau’s forthcoming payday loan regulations by two years.
Tim Canova, who is running against Wasserman-Schultz, accuses her of “welcoming loan sharks into the Democratic Party” in an editorial on Huffington Post. The DNC Chair is also trying to drum up support from Congressional Democrats to block the consumer protections.
Jay Henderson with Democracy for America calls this a “fight for the soul of the Democratic party.” The organization has launched a petition asking the DNC chair and Democrats in Congress to stand with Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the battle over payday loans.
Henderson states, “To have the head of the Democratic Party lobby Democratic congressmembers on behalf of these insidious scammers is deplorable and outrageous. Everyday, the payday loan industry ensnares more and more Americans in a never-ending cycle of debt. Desperate families, living paycheck to paycheck, face a terrible choice: Skip meals and other essentials or take out small loans with interest rates as high as 400 percent.”
Consumer groups including Americans for Financial Reform, Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Federation of America, NAACP, National Consumer Law Center, National Council of La Raza, National People's Action, Southern Poverty Law Center and hundreds of other groups wrote a letter to all 535 members of Congress in December urging them to oppose the legislation.
Recent comments