prepaid-card cartoons

U.S. consumer watchdog’s prepaid-card rule survives Congress challenge

A major challenge to the U.S. watchdog for consumer finances fizzled on Thursday, as Congress missed a deadline to repeal the agency’s new rule on prepaid cards.
Late last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule requiring greater disclosures and overdraft limits for the cards sold by companies such as Mastercard Inc. and Greendot and frequently used in place of paychecks.
The timing made the rule eligible for Congress to repeal it under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), but lawmakers only had until Thursday to kill the regulation by passing a disapproval resolution in both chambers with simple majorities.
Republican Senator David Perdue of Georgia, one of the agency’s biggest critics, had introduced a resolution that he tried to speed through his chamber, but congressional aides and advocacy groups said he could not gather enough votes.
Perdue has repeatedly said the CFPB, created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to protect individuals against fraud, oversteps its authority. Earlier this week he said he intends to keep up pressure on the agency.
The resolution’s failure indicates that future regulations from the CFPB, reviled by many Republicans, may have shots at survival. The agency is led by Democrat Richard Cordray, was created by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and was originally conceived by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leader in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
The CFPB was expected to soon finalize restrictions on the fine print in contracts known as “mandatory arbitration clauses” that require consumers to give up their rights to class-action lawsuits as a condition of buying a service or product. But the rule’s fate has been caught in limbo. Congress is expected to kill it swiftly with a CRA resolution once it is official.
While the first half-dozen CRA resolutions flew easily through Congress, repealing a wide spectrum of Obama-era regulations, the final resolutions faced a tougher time. One limiting methane emissions from oil and gas production on public lands failed on Wednesday. All told, Congress killed 14 regulations since Feb. 1.
Lawmakers could still vote after this week to repeal rules that Obama finished in the last six months of his administration, but they will need super-majorities in each chamber, which is nearly impossible to achieve in the more closely divided Senate.

GOP Needs To Fight for Principles

While President Trump celebrated the AHCA passing in the House, Stephen Moore said the next top priorities, are passing his tax plan, passing his budget, and building the wall.
Stephen Moore, an economist from the Heritage Foundation, said the spending bill that passed  was a disappointment.
But Moore thinks President Trump made a calculated political move to not fight on the budget, because he wanted to get the healthcare act through.
But now, it’s time for conservatives and the Trump administration to fight for the priorities of the American people.
Moore said economic growth and putting Americans back to work is the key to solving the budget and poverty problem
But if the Democrats want to shutdown the government in opposition to Trump’s tax plan and the budget, then the blame is on them.
“It’s no great crisis if we have a short-term government shutdown. It only means that places like the Department of Education, the Department of Energy won’t show up to work for a couple of days, but if it is to fight over a major principle about our debt or about what are the functions of our government what should we be funding or what shouldn’t we be funding. If its about funding our national security to make our county is safe, then Republicans should stand up for principle they shouldn’t just go in fetal position over these budget fights,” Moore said.
Moore said he has never seen an opposition party like the Democratic Party, but despite this resistance, President Trump’s agenda is moving forward.

U.S. House tax committee sets first hearing on tax reform

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday set a May hearing on the potential impact of tax reform on U.S. economic growth, the first in what is expected to be a series of sessions as Congress edges toward tax reform legislation.
The Republican-controlled panel, which oversees tax policy in the House of Representatives, said in a statement that the hearing will take place on Thursday, May 18 at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) and focus on tax reform policies that Republicans see as most likely to spur economic growth and job creation. The statement did not identify witnesses for the hearing.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady has said he could introduce a tax reform bill sometime in June.

Kushner Cos says to skip China marketing push this weekend

The company owned by the family of senior White House aide Jared Kushner will skip roadshow events in China this weekend seeking money from local investors for a real estate project in exchange for a shot at U.S. immigrant visas, a company spokesman said.
Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jared’s sister, appeared at marketing events last weekend in Beijing and Shanghai in an effort to raise $150 million from Chinese investors through the controversial EB-5 visa-for-investment program.
According to marketing materials from one of the organizers of the roadshow, sales events for the project are scheduled in the southern cities of Shenzhen on Saturday and Guangzhou on Sunday.
“No one from Kushner Companies will be in China this weekend,” James Yolles, spokesman for the firm, said.
The company and KABR Group are raising money for a two-tower apartment complex in New Jersey called One Journal Square, marketing materials showed.
Kushner Companies earlier this week apologized for Meyer having mentioned Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in discussing the project. The company said Meyer had done so only in an attempt to make clear that her brother was not involved.
“Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer’s intention,” it said.
In addition to Meyer, Laurent Morali, president of Kushner Companies, was included in marketing materials online for the China road show.
Jared Kushner, whose White House portfolio includes relations with China, sold his stake in Kushner Companies to a family trust early this year.
The EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to, in effect, buy U.S. immigration visas for themselves and families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects.
A member of the audience at the marketing event in Shanghai said Meyer spoke for about 10 minutes during last Sunday’s event and described her family’s humble roots.
According to the New York Times, in Beijing on Saturday she told the audience of about 100 people the project “means a lot to me and my entire family”.