The Honorable Representative Luiz Gutierrez (D-Illinois) can now count himself along with Maxine Walters as among ‘the best politicians money can buy’. And don’t think for one moment this is some aberrant behavior restricted to a few yahoos in the House. There is a very good reason Joe Biden was know as Senator Master Card.
This is, in fact, the entirely predictable behavior of a hopelessly corrupt, arrogant and retarded political class feasting next to a vomitorium built on the backs of ‘citizen’/slave labor and with a never-ending supply of special interest money.
There will be a day of reckoning in this country for the pigs and carrion feeding vultures that have grown fat picking the bones of decent Americans. It will not be pretty and I sincerely hope I get to watch it all happen.
from The Consumerist
by Carey
A House subcommittee wants to legalize payday loans with interest rates of up to 391%. Lobbyists from the payday industry bought Congress’ support by showering influential members, including Chairman Luiz Gutierrez, with campaign cash. The Congressman is now playing good cop, bad cop with the payday industry, which is pretending to oppose his generous gift of a bill.
“While they may not be JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America, they’re very powerful. Their influence should not be underestimated,” Gutierrez, the top Democrat on the Financial Services subcommittee in charge of consumer credit issues, said in an interview this week.
Indeed, the payday lending industry is strenuously resisting Gutierrez’s measure, which it says would devastate its business. The measure would cap the annual interest rate for a payday loan at 391 percent, ban so-called “rollovers” – where a borrower who can’t afford to pay off the loan essentially renews it and pays large fees – and prevent lenders from suing borrowers or docking their wages to collect the debt.
a new broom
A newer player representing Internet payday lenders – a growing segment of the market – also ramped up its lobbying and political giving efforts. The Online Lenders Alliance, formed in 2005, nearly quintupled, to $480,000, its lobbying expenditures from 2007 and 2008. It contributed $108,400 to candidates in advance of the 2008 elections compared to about $2,000 in the 2006 contests. Gutierrez was among the top House recipients, getting $4,600, while the top Senate recipient was Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., a Banking Committee member who got $6,900.
After watching members of the military fall prey to exorbitant payday loans, Congress in 2006 capped the interest rates for military payday loans at 36%. Fifteen states have similar caps or outright bans.
Congressman Gutierrez is competing with Congressman Joe Baca to see who can author the biggest giveaway. Baca’s legislation would allow rollovers, higher fees for online banks, and would pre-empt state laws banning payday loans.
Someone—maybe Carolyn Maloney, who did an excellent job with the Credit Card Bill of Rights—needs to step up and punch the payday lending lobbyists in the face.
