House GOP Wants To Stop The Pentagon From Protecting Military Families From Financial Predators

Military families will be exposed to predatory car loans and payday lenders for another year unless a little-noticed provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is stripped out of the bill during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday.

Majority Republicans quietly inserted language into the gigantic defense legislation that would override a Pentagon push to enhance consumer protections for men and women in uniform. Flaws in the current rules have allowed lenders to trap military families in loans that cost two, five, and even ten times as much to repay as what the loan was actually worth.

Pentagon officials laid out plans in 2014 to revamp the rules that protect armed forces families from unscrupulous financial firms, after multiple analyses of how lenders use loopholes in the 2006 Military Lending Act (MLA) to target soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. But a subcommittee draft of the NDAA would prohibit the Department of Defense (DOD) from implementing the rules it wants until it conducts a further study of the current rules and submits the findings to Congress. READ MORE