Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 380, I call up the bill (H.R. 2547) to expand and enhance consumer, student, servicemember, and small business protections with respect to debt collection practices, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Ms. WATERS. 2547 and to include extraneous material thereon.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my legislation, H.R. 2547, the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act.
H.R. 2547 is a package of bills designed to bring new protections, fairness, accuracy, and transparency to the debt collection industry.
Individuals and families across this country have long struggled with debt, including medical debt, student loan debt, and other debts. They often face difficult decisions regarding how to pay off their debts.
During the pandemic crisis, which has harmed all of our communities, debt collectors have earned record profits. Their tactics are often divisive and predatory. Many debt collectors harass consumers with frequent phone calls, make threats, and provide misleading information to consumers. The debt collection industry is also plagued by poor recordkeeping, resulting in many consumers being harassed for debts they do not owe.
Debt collection is among the top issues that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau receives the most complaints about from consumers, and those complaints have risen since 2019.
This bill, H.R. 2547, brings new accountability to the debt collection industry and stronger protections for consumers from harassment and abuse, including by banning abusive confessions of judgment that have hurt small businesses, prohibiting debt collectors from harassing and threatening servicemembers, barring collection of medical debts from 2 years after the debt is incurred, prohibiting debt collectors from contacting consumers by email or text message without a consumer's affirmative consent, limiting egregious debt collection fees that have disproportionately hurt low-income and minority borrowers, and protecting consumers during a nonjudicial foreclosure proceeding.
Taken together, these protections will help the most vulnerable consumers, including servicemembers, student borrowers, people of color, and those struggling under the weight of medical debt during this unprecedented pandemic.
None of this is to say that people who owe lawful debts shouldn't pay them, but all Americans deserve to be free from harassment, undue pressure tactics, bullying, false information, threats, coercion, and other bad practices that debt collectors have used with relative impunity.
The last time Congress made major updates to Federal laws on debt collection was 1978, over 40 years ago. It is long overdue for Congress to act to provide stronger protections from abusive debt collection for consumers.
This comprehensive package includes a number of bills authored by several hardworking members of the Financial Services Committee, specifically bills sponsored by Representative Velazquez, Representative Dean, Representative Tlaib, Representative Pressley, Representative Cleaver, Representative Meeks, and Representative Auchincloss.
I would like to thank all of them for their work on these bills, their contributions to this legislative package, and their leadership on these important reforms that will provide desperately needed relief and protection to consumers.
I would urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, this bill provides urgently needed protections to individuals and families from unfair and abusive debt collection practices.
Consumers should not have to face harassment or threats from abusive debt collectors, especially in the midst of this unprecedented pandemic. It is long overdue for Congress to bring new accountability to the debt collection industry.
Because of the strong protections the bill creates for consumers, the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act is supported by more than 85 consumer, civil rights, and small business organizations, including Americans for Financial Reform, Center for Responsible Lending, Color of Change, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Consumer Law Center, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Public Citizen, Small Business Majority, and Student Borrower Protection Center.
Mr. Speaker, you have heard the debate and the discussion on this bill today. My colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle have tried in their presentation to have the people listening to this debate believe that the bill would hurt consumers. That is absolutely not true. My friends on the opposite side of the aisle seem more interested in protecting the debt collectors.
As I mentioned, we are still in the midst of a pandemic. Many of our consumers have been laid off from their jobs. Some businesses have closed down.
Americans like to pay their bills. They want to pay their bills. If they cannot pay their bills, we should not have debt collectors who are harassing them, calling the commanders of servicemembers and threatening to have them penalized in some way, using all the different platforms to harass.
One of the Members on the opposite side of the aisle tried to make us believe that somehow we are saying you can't use any of the platforms on the internet. We are not saying that. We are saying don't misuse them, don't abuse them. We are saying that this is about the Members of Congress who are sent here to represent their constituents being able to represent them at one of the most important times in this economy.
I would ask all Members, despite what you have heard from the opposite side of the aisle, to rise to this occasion and show our consumers we care about them and do not want them to be harassed and abused.
These predatory debt collectors must stop the way that they are harassing our consumers and work with them. They should be doing workouts. If you can't pay $50 a month, you can have a workout that says you can pay $10 a month or $15 a month on your debt. Of course, the predatory debt collectors can do this if they wish.
One of the things you must understand is they have earned more in profits during this pandemic than any other time in recent years, so they are gouging, and they are harassing needlessly so.
I would ask the Members of Congress to please join us and vote ``aye'' on this very important legislation. I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 3 of House Resolution 380, I offer amendments en bloc No. 1.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this set of amendments that will strengthen the protections in my bill, H.R. 2547, the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act.
I thank Representatives Adams, Bonamici, Bowman, Bush, Cohen, Craig, Newman, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Payne, Ross, and Williams for their work on their amendments to improve the bill and provide additional protections for consumers.
These amendments would create a Consumer Bill of Rights Against Abusive Debt Collection Practices, putting in plain language what debt collection protections and remedies a consumer has; require CFPB strategy to use their enforcement and other tools to combat abusive debt collection during the pandemic; study racial disparities in debt collection and develop solutions to address these disparities.
Several amendments would also help students by providing private student loan borrowers with the same credit reporting protections that Federal student loan borrowers have during the pandemic; releasing cosigners in the event of the death of a private student loan borrower, regardless of when that debt occurred; studying practices and additional reforms to better protect private student loan borrowers.
Finally, these amendments address new forms of communication specifically prohibiting debt collectors from harassing a consumer on social media, and studying electronic communications and developing recommendations to further protect consumers from harassment.
Together, these amendments will protect our constituents from abusive debt collectors. So I urge Members to vote ``yes.''
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Ms. WATERS. Craig).
Mr. Speaker, these amendments offered by our colleagues make H.R. 2547 even stronger for our constituents who deserve to be treated fairly. I would like to again thank Representatives Adams, Bonamici, Bowman, Bush, Cohen, Craig, Newman, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Payne, Ross, and Williams for their work on these amendments to H.R. 2547.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support these amendments, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 3 of House Resolution 380, I offer amendments en bloc No. 2.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendments offered by Representatives Luetkemeyer and Burgess. Representative Burgess' amendment does not provide any new protections for low-income consumers or consumers with no credit or poor credit history.
Instead, this is an attempt to prevent my bill, H.R. 2547, from being implemented at all. Under the guise of a certification standard, Mr. Burgess' amendment would create a legal loophole for unscrupulous debt collectors to challenge and potentially block not just some, but all of the protections included in this bill for servicemembers, student borrowers, borrowers with a medical debt, and so many more.
This is not a serious attempt to have low-income borrowers, it is an attempt to protect debt collectors who are making record profits during this pandemic.
I do not support this poison pill amendment. Representative Luetkemeyer's amendment to study and delay misses the mark on what is needed to protect consumers from the harm of ongoing, unfair debt collection practices.
Copious research has been shown that debt collection harassment and mistreatment have created undue stress and financial burdens on consumers, especially for low-income people, and in communities of color.
My bill does not restrict debt collection, but rather ensures consumer protection for those who are facing harassment or other abusive tactics used by debt collectors.
Millions of consumers are still struggling to make ends meet during this tragic public health pandemic. Instead of considering the amount of stress consumers feel when they get sick, need medical care, and face harassment from a debt collector, Mr. Luetkemeyer's amendment would commission a study and delay implementation of my bill by a full year.
H.R. 2547 would already provide the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a sensible 6-month implementation period, during which the Bureau can give all stakeholders guidance on how to comply.
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the substitute amendment offered by our committee's ranking member, Mr. McHenry.
Mr. McHenry's partisan proposal is a nonstarter and not a serious attempt to find common ground with bipartisan support. The Republican substitute amendment does not include several important elements of my bill, H.R. 2547, and fundamentally weakens many essential protections in the few provisions he included.
For example, Mr. McHenry included a prohibition on confessions of judgment based on title I. However, he included a harmful provision related to written affidavits, effectively undermining the prohibition on confessions of judgment, and severely reducing protections for small businesses struggling during this pandemic.
The Federal Trade Commission banned confessions of judgment more than 35 years ago in 1985 for consumer loans. Our committee learned that small business owners, like taxicab drivers, have unwittingly waived their typical due process rights when it comes to debt collection because these harmful confessions of judgment terms were tucked into their small business loan.
Representative Velazquez has been leading the effort on this in the House, working in a bipartisan fashion with Senators Brown and Rubio. However, if we take the approach proposed by Mr. McHenry, small businesses will continue to be ripped off.
Moreover, I would add H.R. 2547 includes several other bipartisan provisions, including title II, which is based on a bill by Representative Dean to protect servicemembers from harassment and threats from debt collectors. The House has unanimously passed title II as a standalone bill twice, both last year and this year.
Additionally, title VI would enhance protections related to Federal agency debts based on a bill by Representative Cleaver that has been bipartisan for a number of years, but when we tried to move it on the suspension calendar last year, Republicans changed their mind.
Unfortunately, at a time when consumers are suffering while debt collectors make record profits during the pandemic, the House Republican alternative is not a serious effort to reform and modernize our debt collection laws.
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