For the last several years Congressman Miller has worked on an anti-predatory lending bill and has visited us here to explain his work. Most recently this diary and this diary have given some background to his efforts.
Now his bill, supported by Congressman Watt and reworked by Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, has been marked up and moved through committee. It is moving quickly towards a vote in the full House of Representatives next week. The bill is pretty good, but it could be made better if a few thousand Kossacks would take a minute for some automated activism on the bill. Follow me over the jump and I’ll explain why and how.
The bill in question is HR 3915 which passed the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday by a vote of 45-19. This partially bi-partisan vote came because Chairman Frank has worked hard to find some common ground with the ranking member Congressman Bachus. But perhaps he’s found a little too much common ground as the version of the bill that passed out of committee provides some pre-emption from state anti-predatory lending laws for the Wall Street firms that securitize these loans.
In an alert to its members yesterday the National Community Reinvestment Coalition phrased the concern this way:
We have an important window of opportunity to influence the final shape of the bill.
During debate yesterday, Representatives Waters and Watt expressed concerns regarding preemption. Chairman Frank stated that those concerns will be addressed as the bill reaches the House floor. We must therefore keep e-mails and phone calls to Congress going, asking that the preemption be removed or significantly narrowed. Current state law at least allows borrowers, on an individual basis, to seek redress. This right for individual borrowers needs to be preserved in a national bill. There can be no loans qualifying for "safe harbors" precluding borrowers from seeking remedies on an individual basis.
Please let your Congressional Representative know it is crucial that Federal Law NOT Preempt State law!
Here is where you can help with some online activism. Please weigh in on this bill with your Representative using the democracy in action web site managed by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition for this purpose. This is truly a simple process that requires less than a minute of your time and automatically sends a fax or an email to your representative.
All you need to do is click here:
Then fill in your name, address and other contact information, check either the email or fax button and then click the “submit message” button. If you wish, you can edit and personalize the actual letter on the left hand side of the page. On the basis of the information you have entered, this web site will then email or fax this letter with your name signed on the bottom directly to your Representative.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. There will likely be additional opportunities to improve the bill when the Senate begins work on it. I’ll try to keep you posted.