In The Loop: The Pay-Day Lenders' Ties To Powerful Beltway Influence-Peddlers

[Donnachaidh]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/in_the_loop_the_pay-day_lenders_ties_to_powerful_beltway_influence-peddlers.php

We told you last week about the sophisticated Washington lobbying and PR operation that has helped the $42 billion-a-year pay-day lending industry water down provisions in the financial reform bill currently before Congress. But it looks like the industry's ties to a host of heavy-hitting, and sometimes controversial, Beltway players are even more extensive.

Those players, it appears, include a prominent and well-regarded DC consulting firm founded by top former Clinton administration staffers, a key editor at the Andrew-Breitbart-created website that hosted James O'Keefe's ACORN "exposes," Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, and a notorious corporate lobbyist known as "Dr. Evil." Taken together, the pay-day lenders' connections in the capital make clear that the industry has quietly -- and in a remarkably short time -- enmeshed itself into a network of Washington influence-peddlers skilled at putting a favorable sheen on a host of corporate causes.

Pay-day lenders offer small, short-term loans -- typically anywhere from $100-$1000 -- often designed to tide customers over until their next pay-check. But the loans, which come with high finance charges and can carry interest rates of as much as 400 percent on an annualized basis, lead many working-class borrowers to end up digging themselves deeper into debt. As a result, the industry has in recent years become a prime target of consumer advocates and their allies on Congress, who accuse it of preying on struggling Americans, and have sought ways to rein it in. That's led the pay-day lenders to pull out all the stops to fight back -- including spending millions on lobbying and developing a network of websites and other PR tools to promote its interests and attack its critics.

And the list of big-name Washington players who have helped out with that effort is even longer than we told you. In 2008, the Community Financial Services Association -- the major trade association for the pay-day lenders, created in 1999 -- paid over $4 million to the Glover Park Group for "consulting and media" help, according to 990 forms submitted to the IRS and examined by TPMmuckraker. The powerhouse Washington lobbying and PR firm was founded by a team of former Clinton administration staffers including Joe Lockhart, Carter Eskew, and Susan Brophy. It has also employed Howard Wolfson, who ran communications for Hillary Clinton's Senate and presidential campaigns, as well as Republicans like Mitt Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. A Glover Park spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from TPMmuckraker about its work with the pay-day lenders.


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