Honored to Serve?

Press Release

15th Congressional District candidate, Scott Wharton, (D-Amanda) exposed today the work his opponent, U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, (R-Upper Arlington) is doing on behalf of payday lenders at the expense of U.S. service members and their families.

"Mr. Stivers wraps himself in the flag when it's campaign time, but when he's in Congress, he puts his donors ahead of military families trying to make ends meet," Wharton said.

Wharton is referring to an amendment Stivers sponsored and got included into H.R. 1735, a defense appropriations bill. The amendment -- had the bill not been ultimately vetoed by President Barack Obama -- would have stymied U.S. Dept. of Defense efforts to help protect service members and their families from the predatory lending tactics of payday lenders.

This past weekend marked the one-year anniversary of Stivers' payday lending legislation passing the House.

For many years, the Defense Dept. sought solutions to the scourge of predatory lending on service members and their families. A 2014 report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outlined the need for reform, finding that thousands of service members and their families were sold high interest, short-term loans by payday lenders. Just one example from the report was a $2,600 payday loan that took one year for the family to pay back at a final cost of nearly $4,000.

Wharton said that according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Stivers has received contributions of at least $110,000 from the payday lending industry in the past three election cycles and is always in the top ten list of members of the House who receive financial support from the industry.

"Despite only being in Congress for the past five years, Mr. Stivers ranks 11th on the "all-time' list of recipients of money from the payday lending industry," Wharton said.

Wharton said Stivers' heavy lifting on behalf of predatory lenders is "part and parcel of the hypocrisy of Steve acting like a moderate in Upper Arlington and working for the highest bidder in Washington, D.C."

Wharton points to Stivers' current campaign to lead the National Republican Congressional Committee. If Stivers is elected by GOP members of Congress to this leadership post, he will become the chief fundraiser for GOP candidates for Congress.

"Folks in the 12 Ohio counties represented by Mr. Stivers need to ask, "Is this what we send a representative to Washington to work on?," Wharton said.

"Do we send people to D.C. to spend most of their time fundraising and moving up in the ranks? Or, are we sending people to D.C. to solve problems and put the interests of real working people ahead of the big donors," Wharton said.

Wharton is also calling on Stivers to provide his constituents a full accounting of his time in the current Congress.

"Mr. Stivers should release all of his scheduling documents -- from his official office, leadership PAC and campaign committee -- so we know how much time he's spending on what we sent him to do versus his political fundraising work," Wharton said.

"How many trips has he made on behalf of other members' campaigns? How much call time is he logging in D.C. and Upper Arlington dialing for dollars? What's the breakdown between official business and political business?"

"When a colonel in the National Guard goes against the best interests of the troops, there's an accounting that needs to occur," Wharton said.

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