Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. REED. Mr. President, this amendment is very straightforward. It would provide within the new office of consumer financial protection a military liaison, an individual who is charged with protecting the interests of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines as consumers.

Let me tell my colleagues--and I will elaborate later, but let me be very brief and to the point. We have soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and their families who are consistently exploited by unscrupulous car dealers, payday lenders--a whole panoply of people who flock around military bases to exploit these individuals. They are in a very difficult situation. They have stress because they are on constant deployments. In many cases, military families today have one spouse deployed and one military spouse back taking care of children. I don't have to go much further. The Presiding Officer understands this from his dealings with the USO and families across the country.

Let me give my colleagues two examples. I could give you 200 examples. If this was not true, it would be almost humorous, but it is sadly true. This is one I like. This is the ``free transportation to the beach'' ploy. True story: A car dealer from Virginia Beach went to Camp Lejeune and offered free round trips to the beach. These are young marines. If you have been to Camp Lejeune, you know it is not the Paris of North Carolina. It is a place where you need a little diversion. They wanted to go to Virginia Beach. They were given this round trip. They got to Virginia Beach. There was no round trip unless they bought a car from this car dealer. Well, he was caught, lost his license, but reappeared later without a license, making the same ploy.

I wish to make a point. I am not condemning car dealers. In my home State, they are great. They do wonderful work for the community. But exploitation by car dealers of military personnel is a significant problem. Seventy-two percent of military financial counselors recently surveyed had counseled Servicemembers on auto lending abuses in the past six months.

One other example. Fort Riley, KS. Army Specialist Jennifer Howard bought a car while she was stationed there. It turns out the dealership which arranged her financing charged her for features on the car she never got, such as a moon roof and alloy wheels. In her words:

The dealership knows that we're busy, we're tired. We don't take the time, because we don't have a lot of time. It's like get in, get out, do what we got to do. If we get taken advantage of later, we'll deal with it then.

That is no way to treat soldiers. It is no way to treat consumers. This liaison would be very important, but I should say it has to have the authority within the bill to actually act against the disruptive behavior of auto dealers, payday lenders, and a whole host of individuals.

The rent-to-own people, they are trying to scam our troops. They are trying to scam consumers.

Frankly, they don't care if you are wearing a uniform or not, they are out to scam who they can. We need to set up a strong consumer financial protection agency, and we particularly have to have somebody in there watching over the troops.

I yield to my colleague.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source