Maxine Waters Runs Right Over Paul Ryan But Still Gets Rolled On Racist Car Loans
I tell ya, this baby is an original movie car. Don't ask what movie
Paul Ryan was very pleased with himself Thursday as he sent another bill rolling back burdensome government regulations to the White House. You can tell he was pleased, because he bragged about it on the Twitter!
Great news→ This bill repealing another burdensome Obama-era regulation that's hurting consumers in the auto lending marketplace is off to the @WhiteHouse . pic.twitter.com/EWqfXqgoSZ
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) May 10, 2018
Isn't that great? Now it will be easier for all Americans to get car loans, thanks to the elimination of burdensome government regulations. Say, what awful burdensome regulations were those, anyway, New York Times?
In a vote of 234 to 175, the House nullified 2013 guidance issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aimed at preventing auto lenders from charging minorities higher fees when taking out car loans. The move followed a similar vote last month by the Senate to void the antidiscrimination guidance and the resolution to strike down the rule will now go to President Trump, who is expected to sign off on it.
Oh, riiiiiight. Consumers were obviously suffering from all those nasty prohibitions on discrimination in car loans, huh? We're betting the rationale for eliminating the CFPB rule was that discrimination is already illegal, so why do we need regulations specifying discrimination for one kind of loan anyway? It's not like there was some kind of widespread problem with car loans, was there?
The Center for Responsible Lending analyzed loan level data in 2011 and found that black and Latino consumers were receiving higher numbers of interest rate markups on their car loans than white consumers. The bureau issued guidance in 2013 urging auto lenders to curb discriminatory lending practices and used that guidance to justify lawsuits that they brought against auto finance companies.
OK, but what about the higher costs for everyone else of not letting car dealers discriminate, huh? Indeed, isn't singling out companies that charge more for loans to black and Latino customers a kind of race-based discrimination in itself? Anyway, discrimination is still illegal, so once individual minority customers can prove they've been discriminated against, surely they can gather all the evidence they need to go after lenders in individual cases, right? Or maybe they won't, and maybe that's the point, as Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, argued:
[Waters] warned on Tuesday that Republicans were opening a Pandora’s box that could herald the repeal of rules that have been in place for years, potentially harming consumers in a variety of ways. She pushed back against the suggestion that the consumer bureau rule relied upon bad data and said killing it would hurt minorities.
“This is about discrimination,” Ms. Waters said.
Was she met with bullshit? She was met with bullshit, and she was having none of it:
'I do not yield. Not one second to you. Not one second.' — Rep. Maxine Waters will never stop reclaiming her time pic.twitter.com/JDwfeEWy4i
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 10, 2018
Gosh, Maxine, you didn't even acknowledge Mike Kelly's (R-PA) very Trumpian, not at all racist insistence that the only way to Make America Great Again is to "stop talking about discrimination and start talking about the nation," a delightful rhyming turn of phrase worthy of JFK or even Martin Luther King Jr. Why would Maxine Waters, of all people, fail to recognize such brilliance? Is she racist against the nation?
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Republican from Texas who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, whitesplained that in reality, there's no such thing as discrimination in lending, because he doesn't believe in that sort of thing, and the CFPB was just chasing after imaginary bad things:
“They claimed that somehow there was unconscious discrimination,” Mr. Hensarling said. “They made it up. They had no data.”
See? Refuted! And so Congress used the infamous "Congressional Review Act" -- which has been used to roll back oodles of regulations that can never be reinstated -- to kill off the CFPB direction on discrimination in auto loans.
It's almost as if they're trying to roll back as much of the last eight years as they possibly can, in case something about the composition of Congress might change in November.
Friend of Wonkette Charlie Pierce, whose tweet brought this latest Ryan fuckery to our notice, was left shaking his head in amazed disgust:
The burdensome Obama-era regulation in question prohibited racial and ethnic discrimination in auto loans.
God, what a fake this man is. https: //t.co/JBlzVSI04c— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) May 10, 2018
We're looking forward to Ryan's next adventure, when he works to free Grama Minnie of the burden of having her nursing home care covered by Medicaid. She'll finally be able to explore innovative alternative housing opportunities. If, of course, she can still find an appliance store that gives away its refrigerator boxes instead of recycling them.
[ NYT / Now This News on Twitter]
I'm glad that Flee Zeldin was in that picture.
It gives those of us working to oust him more evidence as to why.
They have no empathy. If they had even a pinch of empathy they wouldn’t be the arseholes they are.