Win in Congress: Attempt to Roll Back Payday Rule Fails

by Kathy Grear 05/24/2018

At a time when victories are hard to come by, please take a minute to celebrate a big win! We stopped Congress from rolling back the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s national payday rule. Last week, the clock ran out on efforts to use the fast-track Congressional Review Act to repeal the rule and prevent the bureau from regulating payday and car title lenders in the future. They didn’t have the votes they needed to pass H.J. Resolution 122, the payday CRA. With strong opposition from so many fronts, members of Congress realized that the price was too high to side with payday lenders who make 400% interest rate loans designed to trap borrowers in debt.

Thank you for all you did to make this victory possible. Thank you for contacting your member of Congress, and then doing it again. Thank you for joining our NC sign-on letter opposing the payday CRA. Thank you for tweeting and sending letters to the editor and op-eds.

Check out our North Carolina press release, our new analysis of savings by County and Congressional District by keeping payday and car title lenders out of our state, and recent North Carolina media coverage — op-eds by the Commander of the NC Veterans Council and CRL’s NC Policy Director and editorials in the Winston-Salem Journal and Greensboro News & Record.

Not everyone in our North Carolina delegation was helpful. Six North Carolina members of Congress, more than any other state, stood with payday lenders who are illegal in our state when they co-sponsored the payday CRA: Reps. Ted Budd, Richard Hudson, Patrick McHenry, Robert Pittenger, David Rouzer, and Mark Walker.

We know this fight isn’t over. Acting Director Mulvaney, still temporarily in charge at the Consumer Bureau, will keep looking for ways to help payday lenders. And Congress and federal bank regulators still have dangerous proposals that threaten our state usury cap. But those fights are for another day. Today, we won big because you took the time to act. Thank you a thousand times over!

Please let me know if you have any questions. Please follow me on Twitter, follow CRL on Twitter, and click “like” for CRL on Facebook.