The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee has already signalled that the General Assembly is unlikely to place a cap on the interest collected on predatory loans - by shooting down a number of bills from Peninsula lawmakers seeking a 36 percent yearly cap.
With Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw running the show it's unclear whether the bills would ever survive on the Senate side.
But Del. Glenn Oder's bill is still alive on the House side at least right now - and the proposal would cap all payday, car title and open end credit plans at 36 percent. Oder was hoping to get folks to vote for his plan - and he's been working the hallways hard in the past couple hours.
It's a pretty sweeping bill and it's set to come up in the next few minutes in a sub committee of the House Commerce and Labor Committee. The deck is already stacked against the bill because of the makeup of the sub committee.
The sub committee has a bunch of folks who aren't inclined to vote for the plan including committee chairman Terry Kilgore, who doesn't always have to show up to sub committees but he's here today.
And that's not to mention the fact that folks like Del. Ken Alexander, D-Norfolk, the former head of the Legislative Black Caucus, hasn't shown up at the hearing yet which reduces the odds of success even more. (There's some rumbling about why Alexander isn't here among advocates of cracking down on payday loans.)
Oder doesn't look hopeful up at the podium right now.
UPDATE: Bill killed.
UPDATE: Oder was joined at the podium by Mel Hall, a Northern Virginia resident who drove to Richmond to testify about his run in with payday lenders. Hall said in July 2009 he took out a $2,000 loan to make payroll for his construction company because of a lull in business and acknowledged that his "options were severely limited.
"I'm still paying on it. I've paid a total of $10,000," Hall said."My balance is still over $3,000."
Oder was clearly frustrated when the bill was killed and called the loss "tremendously disappointing" because he said he had the votes to get the bill to full committee if "people were in their seats."
"It's a waste of time when people don't show up," Oder said.
Asked if he thought some Democrats - including Alexander and Del. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, deliberately "took a walk" - an old school political euphemism for disappearing from a committee to change the outcome - Oder simply smiled.
"It's a parlimentary procedure sometimes used by folks who don't want to take tough votes," he said.
The real purpose of credit card is to help people in times of emergency. But because most people are blinded by material things, they keep on purchasing through their card, which only makes them hard for it to pay the monthly bill. And with the interest, the bill keeps on increasing its amount if not fully paid. And sometimes, some agencies take advantage of the elder people by deceiving them with things that would make big profits on their side only. I'm happy that Credit CARD act of 2009 did some things to protect the consumers but I hope they would also do the same to elder ones.
Posted by: Online Cash Advance | Wednesday, February 09, 2011 at 11:26 PM
Good infomation, continue..........
Posted by: Derek | Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 04:03 AM