The Boston Globe wrote a powerful expose of the dark underbelly of debt collection, complete with dozens of slimy tricks that debt collectors used to cheat people out of their property and drive up costs for those who are already having trouble paying their bills. Judge Carol Kenner wrote a superb op-ed, suggesting how the debt collection laws should be reformed to protect ordinary folks from the worst abuses.
Friday night Congress responded, sending a bill to the president for his signature. And what does the bill do? According to a headline in an online news outlet for the debt collection industry, the new law provides for industry approved changes to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The industry group is celebrating. Just in case the debt collection industry hasn’t muscled enough out of people, Congress is offering to make the laws a bit friendlier for the debt collectors.
Remember some of the abuses: Debt collectors who tried to collect for bills that had been incurred by deceased family members. Debt collectors who gave sewer service, pretending to notify people of pending court actions but throwing away the notices. Debt collectors who ran up expenses, turning claims for a couple of hundred dollars into claims for thousands of dollars. Debt collectors who seemed to be in charge at the local small claims courts.
And so, when Congress decided to take action, whose bidding did they do? They helped out the debt collectors. The debt collection provisions are buried in a bill with another Kafka-esque name: the Financial Services Regulatory Relief bill.
The changes may or may not be big, depending on your view of the rules on hot check collection and whether people should receive warnings so they can protect themselves from debt collectors. But the size of the help isn’t the point. The question is why in the wake of documented abuses is Congress not even interested in asking some tough questions about how they might better protect people who are receiving debt collection calls for bills they don’t even owe.
Once again, hard-working families who have been cheated don’t seem interesting to this Congress. Instead, the only voices heard on Capitol Hill belong to the big players who can line up Political Action Committees and hire lobbyists.
This is wrong.
