Senator Defends Military Payday Loan Stance, Cap
By Paul RizzoPayday Loan Writer
Senator Jim Talent (pictured) is involved in a heated race to keep his seat against Democratic challenger, Claire McCaskill.
Earlier this week, talent visited St. Robert to explain his support for a Senate bill, later passed by the Congress, that would military payday loan interest rates at 36 percent for service members.
While Missouri Democrats have attacked Talent’s figure for still being too high, Talent said Tuesday that 36 percent was the figure recommended by the Department of Defense, where officials are concerned about service members who are undeployable because debt problems have caused them to lose their security clearances.
Talent said the government has a legitimate role in protecting service members from abuse caused by these no faxing payday loans.
“These young men and women are great warriors, but they are young men and women in many cases,” Talent said.
“They get out of boot camp, they go to their first posting, they go to their MOS school, they get their first weekend off, and its very tempting for them to go into a place that promises them a bunch of things and doesn’t tell them the reality of what they are getting into. They borrow a couple of hundred dollars and then they find out they may pay back $1,000 over time."
Talent said 36 percent is “certainly more than enough to make a decent profit” and would “stop the [payday advance] lenders’ abuse in its tracks.”
October 24th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
$1.38 ‘profit’ on a $100 loan and a company only having about 300 accounts translates into a GROSS PROFIT of only $414.00. A business cannot even pay office rent with that, let alone staff salaries and benefits. How does Sen. Talent deem that ‘profit’ a ‘Healthy Profit’?
Obviously Sen. Talent works for the government and has no idea about private sector business issues. I am sure the Mom and Pop Missouri citizen business owners who own these businesses really wonder what side of the ‘American Way’ he is on.