A vote on the payday lending bill has been postponed for the time being after advocates quickly got out the word on how harmful it would be to legalize high-cost predatory loans through HB 2429.
As predicted, the payday lenders and their allies in Harrisburg are going back to the drawing board and will be putting out an amendment to HB 2429 soon, and the bill may be rescheduled for a Committee vote in the near future, potentially next week.
Ryan Briggs from City & State wrote a piece about the bill and the pending amendment, available here:
Please share the article on social media, ideally leading with your own message about the harms of payday lending. Here’s the tweet CLS put out: https://mobile.twitter.com/CLSphila/status/1006634199263186945
Through visits with legislators, phone calls and activating others, we are really making an impact. A number of legislators—on both sides of the aisle—have committed to opposing any legislation that would weaken our existing protections. If we keep up our work, we can stop this bill in the House Commerce Committee.
But we definitely need to keep the pressure on! Time spent now is time well spent because if the bill gets out of Committee, we’ll need to expand our efforts to reach 203 legislators.
Some quick action steps:
- If you haven’t already, please reach out to House Commerce Committee members and ask for a commitment to vote against the bill in Committee. If you’ve emailed, follow-up with members to ensure that they will vote no. Get others to do the same.
- Consider requesting a meeting or stopping by the district office of your representative when the legislature is out of session on Thursday and Friday.
- Keep the opposition public. Submit a letter to the editor or op-ed to your local paper. Tell reporters and editors about the pending bill.
Leave a Reply