Let payday lending bill die
Jimmy PorterThe Bible tells us, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If I were being exploited, then I would want someone to help me resolve the unfairness.
This is why the Christian Action Commission, a ministry of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, urges our legislature to reject a proposed bill, HB 455, that enables payday lenders to charge usurious rates to people in need of a loan.
As a concerned citizen, I believe that when it comes to lending, there is a fine balance between preserving the entrepreneurial spirit of business ownership and the exercise of business ethics so as not to place a person in need into deeper hardship.
Regrettably, HB 455 strikes no such balance. It preserves unconscionable rates of 500% annual interest and some of the highest fees in the nation ($20 to $21.95 per $100 borrowed). While the bill purports to give borrowers more time to repay and lower fees, in reality the cost to borrowers remains no better than we have today.
The Christian Action Commission urged the Conference Committee to improve the bill by limiting the number of loans to six per year, establishing a database to monitor the loans, requiring that lenders only make one loan at a time, and applying the monthly repayment period to all loans (the current bill applies the monthly repayment period only to some loans and makes this requirement easy to get around).
Unfortunately, the legislature did not adopt a single one of these common-sense suggestions. The bill does nothing to stop the payday debt trap.
With very little time left in this session to correct the bill, we urge the legislature to let HB 455 die and resume the debate when there is more time to produce legislation that is more in line with our Judeo-Christian principles.