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COMMENTARY: Capitol Hill hearing takes up the war between the needy and the greedy

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “Any universe with payday lending is answering the question of how to make poverty a sustainable profitable enterprise,” noted Boston’s Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). “Well a lot of people are getting rich off of keeping people poor. And so how do we reform anything that’s based on that premise? The short answer is, we don’t.”

Published

6 years ago

May 2, 2019

Oakland Post

By Charlene Crowell, NNPA Newswire Contributor

At an April 30 Capitol Hill hearing, the multi-dimensional problems wrought by small-dollar, high-cost loans were brought to the attention of lawmakers serving on the powerful House Financial Services Committee. A witness panel representing bankers, consumers, clergy, and public policy organizations taught, recounted, reasoned and preached to lawmakers on the rippling and disastrous effects of debt-trap loans.

Each addressed the industry that reaps billion-dollar profits from the poor: payday, car-title, and other triple-digit interest small-dollar products. The average annual interest rate for payday loans in the United States is 391% although in more than 17 states, many of them home to consumers of color, the APR is even higher.

As consumers suffer financially, it’s a different story for payday lenders: $4.1 billion in fees every year in the 33 states that allow these debt traps, according to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). Similarly, the annual fees generated on car-title loans was found to be $3.8 billion.

The session occurred as the current Administration seeks to permanently reverse a payday rule that was developed over five years of public hearings, research and comments that sought the input of consumers, financial institutions and other stakeholders. Announced by the first Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director, the rule would require lenders to determine if a consumer could repay the loan, also known as the ability-to-repay standard.

With a new CFPB Director, the rule’s suspension was accompanied by an announcement of an intent to begin rulemaking anew. For the industry, the suspension provides yet another opportunity to take the teeth out of financial regulation. For consumers, long-awaited consumer protection that would have taken effect this summer is now indefinite.

With the average borrower earning $25,000 to $30,000 a year, whatever difficulty led them to a payday loan store or web site, made their lives even worse.

For Detroit resident Ken Whittaker, the hearing was a high-profile opportunity to share his personal experience with a $700 payday loan that wound up costing him $7,000, in addition to debt collections, a court judgment, and his tax refund garnished.

“I found I could not afford to pay off the first loan without taking out another one. Then I began a cycle of debt which lasted over a year,” testified Whittaker. “Soon I was paying $600 per month in fees and interest. I eventually closed my bank account to stop payments from being drawn out and leaving me without cash for my family’s rent, groceries and other essential bills.”

In the hearing’s most poignant moment, Whittaker appealed to the lawmakers saying, “Please support strong reform of predatory payday and car title lending for people like me. We work hard to support our families and make our finances stable, and this kind of lending only makes it harder.”

For one lawmaker, Boston’s Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Whittaker’s plea was heard loud and clear.

“Any universe with payday lending is answering the question of how to make poverty a sustainable profitable enterprise,” noted Rep. Pressley. “Well a lot of people are getting rich off of keeping people poor. And so how do we reform anything that’s based on that premise? The short answer is, we don’t.”

Todd McDonald, Senior Vice President and Board Director of the New Orleans-based Liberty Bank and Trust, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) spoke at the hearing from the perspective of community banks. His own firm operates in eight states through 15 branches. He is also a board member of the National Bankers Association, the leading trade association for the nation’s Minority Depository Institutions.

“As a CDFI that serves a largely low and moderate-income consumer base that often utilizes these high-cost, small dollar loans,” testified McDonald, “Liberty often works to help our customers get out of these predatory loans and into more manageable products.”

Since 2008, Liberty Bank has offered a payday and car-title loan alternative known as Freedom Fast loans that averages just over $6,000 and comes with an average interest rate of 12.6%. Liberty provides these loans to customers with credit scores ranging from a low of 500 to higher than 700. It also reports payments to the credit bureaus so that customers can also build their credit ratings.

For the Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, senior pastor of Dallas’ Friendship West Baptist Church and a leading partner in the Faith and Credit Roundtable facilitated by the Center for Responsible Lending, predatory lending is a matter of economic justice that deserves actions and not just hearings.

“Payday predators are a part of a hostile takeover of the economy of the unbanked and underserved. This exploitative industry targets and saturates communities that are already suffering from economic apartheid,” said Rev. Haynes to the lawmakers. “When the vulnerable are drowning in desperation the payday industry throws a ‘life preserver’ weighted with the iron of usurious interest rates.”

“We are calling for strong protections so that those who experience an emergency don’t end up drowning in debt they cannot repay,” added Rev. Haynes.” The pastor forcefully called for the CFPB to implement its “common sense rule” and for enacting legislation, like a bill introduced by Illinois’ Senator Richard Durbin, that would establish a national 36% interest rate cap while allowing states to have lower rate ceilings.

“Borrowers have described the debt trap, in their own words, as ‘a hole that you can’t get out of’, ‘soul-crushing’, and a ‘living hell’, Diane Standaert, a CRL EVP testified. “And research has shown time and time again, that these high-cost lending storefronts are disproportionately situated in Black and Latino communities, even when they have the same or higher incomes than white communities.”

The good Reverend Haynes agreed, adding, “The Bible teaches that nations will be judged by how they treat ‘the least of these’. It must not be said of this nation, “I was hungry, and you gave me a payday loan… I was given a bad hand and you gave me a bad plan.”

Amen, Reverend!

Charlene Crowell is the Communications Deputy Director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at Charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.

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Fighting to Keep Blackness

BlackPressUSA NEWSWIRE — Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 7, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

As this nation observes the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the words of President Trump reverberate. “This country will be WOKE no longer”, an emboldened Trump offered during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Since then, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning that “Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have ordered GSA to sell off the site of the historic Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery.” Her post of little words went on to say, “This is outrageous and we will not let it stand! I am demanding an immediate reversal. Our civil rights history is not for sale!” DOGE trying to sell Freedom Rider Museum

Also, in the news today, the Associated Press is reporting they have a file of names and descriptions of more than 26,000 military images flagged for removal because of connections to women, minorities, culture, or DEI. In more attempts to downplay Blackness, a word that is interchanged with woke, Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C. Mayor Morial Bowser is allowing the name change to keep millions of federal dollars flowing there. Black Lives Matter Plaza was named in 2020 after a tense exchange between President Trump and George Floyd protesters in front of the White House. There are more reports about cuts to equity initiatives that impact HBCU students. Programs that recruited top HBCU students into the military and the pipeline for Department of Defense contracts have been canceled.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing back against this second-term Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Anti-woke message. In the wake of the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, several Congressional Black Caucus leaders are reintroducing the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn and Alabama Congresswoman Terry Sewell are sponsoring H.R. 14, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Six decades ago, Lewis was hit with a billy club by police as he marched for the right to vote for African Americans. The right for Black people to vote became law with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has since been gutted, leaving the nation to vote without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Reflecting on the late Congressman Lewis, March 1, 2020, a few months before his death, Lewis said, “We need more than ever in these times many more someones to make good trouble- to make their own dent in the wall of injustice.”

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Rep. Al Green is Censured by The U.S. House After Protesting Trump on Medicaid

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 6, 2025

Oakland Post

By Lauren Burke

In one of the quickest punishments of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the modern era, Congressman Al Green (D-TX) was censured by a 224-198 vote today in the House. His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question. Of the last three censures of members of the U.S. House, two have been members of the Congressional Black Caucus under GOP control. In 2023, Rep. Jamal Bowman was censured.

On the night of March 4, as President Trump delivered a Joint Address to Congress, Rep. Green interrupted him twice. Rep. Green shouted, “You don’t have a mandate to cut Medicare, and you need to raise the cap on social security,” to President Trump. In another rare event, Rep. Green was escorted off the House floor by security shortly after yelling at the President by order of GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. Over the last four years, members of Congress have yelled at President Biden during the State of the Union. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene was joined by Republican Rep. Lauren Bobert (R-CO) in 2022 in yelling at President Biden. In 2023, Rep. Greene, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) yelled at Biden, interrupting his speech. In 2024, wearing a red MAGA hat, a violation of the rules of the U.S. House, Greene interrupted Biden again. She was never censured for her behavior. Rep. Green voted “present” on his censure and was joined by freshman Democrat Congressman Shomari Figures of Alabama who also voted “present”.

All other members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against censuring Green. Republicans hold a four-seat advantage in the U.S. House after the death of Texas Democrat and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner yesterday. Ten Democrats voted along with Republicans to censure Rep. Green, including Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who is in the leadership as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “I respect them but, I would do it again,” and “it is a matter of conscience,” Rep. Green told Black Press USA’s April Ryan in an exclusive interview on March 5. After the vote, a group of Democrats sang “We Shall Overcome” in the well at the front of the House chamber. Several Republican members attempted to shout down the singing. House Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the House out of session and into a recess. During the brief recess members moved back to their seats and out of the well of the House. Shortly after the vote to censor Rep. Green, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee quickly filed legislation to punish members who participated in the singing of “We Shall Overcome.” Earlier this year, Rep. Ogles filed legislation to allow President Donald Trump to serve a third term, which is currently unconstitutional. As the debate started, the stock market dove down over one-point hours from close. The jobs report will be made public tomorrow.

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Trump Moves to Dismantle Education Department

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The department oversees programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), serving 7.5 million students. Transferring IDEA oversight to another agency, as Trump’s plan suggests, could jeopardize services and protections for disabled students.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 6, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

The Trump administration is preparing to issue an executive order directing newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the Department of Education. While the president lacks the authority to unilaterally shut down the agency—requiring congressional approval—McMahon has been tasked with taking “all necessary steps” to reduce its role “to the maximum extent permitted by law.” The administration justifies the move by claiming the department has spent over $1 trillion since its 1979 founding without improving student achievement. However, data from The Nation’s Report Card shows math scores have improved significantly since the 1990s, though reading levels have remained stagnant. The pandemic further widened achievement gaps, leaving many students behind.

The Education Department provides about 10% of public-school funding, primarily targeting low-income students, rural districts, and children with disabilities. A recent Data for Progress poll found that 61% of voters oppose Trump’s efforts to abolish the agency, while just 34% support it. In Washington, D.C., where student proficiency rates remain low—22% in math and 34% in English—federal funding is crucial. Serenity Brooker, an elementary education major, warned that cutting the department would worsen conditions in underfunded schools.

“D.C. testing scores aren’t very high right now, so cutting the Department of Education isn’t going to help that at all,” she told Hilltop News. A report from the Education Trust found that low-income schools in D.C. receive $2,200 less per student than wealthier districts, leading to shortages in essential classroom materials. The department oversees programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), serving 7.5 million students. Transferring IDEA oversight to another agency, as Trump’s plan suggests, could jeopardize services and protections for disabled students.

The Office for Civil Rights also plays a key role in enforcing laws that protect students from discrimination. Moving it to the Department of Justice, as proposed in Project 2025, would make it harder for families to file complaints, leaving vulnerable students with fewer protections. Federal student aid programs, including Pell Grants and loan repayment plans, could face disruption if the department is dismantled. Experts warn this could worsen the student debt crisis, pushing more borrowers into default. “With funding cuts, they don’t have the materials they need, like books or things to help with math,” Brooker said. “It makes learning less fun for them.”