Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, what is behind this bill? Not a desire to create a Federal floor of consumer protections for rent-to-own customers, as the majority views allege. If Members really believe that the rent-to-own people are in here doing all of this fighting because they want to provide consumer protection for the people that they have been literally ripping off and abusing all of these years, then I guess I do have a bridge I want to sell them. This is an effort to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties imposed by courts from precisely those States whose laws it would preempt. Since 1997, legal actions responding to State consumer law violations have produced legal judgments and settlements against the Nation's largest rent-to-own chain, Rent-a-Center, Incorporated, amounting to $30 million in Minnesota, $16 million in Wisconsin, and more than $60 million in New Jersey. Unable to win under these State laws, or to overturn them at the State level, the rent-to-own industry is simply calling on Congress to preempt them. All of the national consumer organizations oppose H.R. 1701, as has been indicated, as an inadequate standard to protect vulnerable consumers from misleading lease arrangements that really mask installment sales at exorbitant rates of interest. That is what this is all about.”