Letter addresses concerns with the legislation on behalf of the accounts receivable management industry in advance of Thursday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing. Editor’s note: This article is available for members only.
7/21/2020 14:30
ACA International continues to work to educate Congress about the troublesome provisions in the HEROES ACT and submitted a position letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Ranking Member Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., this week. The legislation passed the House of Representatives earlier this summer but is being debated in the Senate.
The committee will meet to discuss the $3 trillion “Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) ACT” during a hearing at 10:30 a.m. EDT, Thursday, July 23.
ACA appreciates that Congress considered our concerns about an outright ban on collections and did not include language limiting the ability to make phone calls in the HEROES Act approved in the House in May. However, the HEROES Act proposes several changes that would have a significant impact on the accounts receivable management (ARM) industry.
“The HEROES Act is a step backward. While it claims to assist consumers by prohibiting debt collection during the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislation instead threatens the debt collection industry’s ability to help its creditor clients, including the small businesses, community financial institutions, and hospitals that rely on them,” ACA CEO Mark Neeb said in the letter.
Read more on the potential impact of the HEROES Act in ACA’s summary: ARM Industry Thoughts on the HEROES Act.
The Senate is not expected to take up the full HEROES Act package from the U.S. House of Representatives and there will continue to be opportunities for Congress to remove the problematic sections. It is expected that Senate discussions on its version of the bill will begin moving forward this week and ACA is continuing its fierce advocacy in the Senate.
The House Financial Services Committee hearing, “The Heroes Act: Providing for a Strong Economic Recovery from COVID-19,” will include some members in attendance on Capitol Hill and others attending remotely.
Witnesses include:
- Shaun Donovan, former secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and former director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget
- Robert Reich, Carmel P. Friesen’s professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, and former decretary, U.S. Department of Labor
- John W. Rogers, Jr., chairman, Co-CEO & chief investment officer, Ariel Investments
- Steven Davis, labor economist, William H. Abbot Professor of International Business and Economics, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
This month, the committee will also hear from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger at 12:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 30, during “Protecting Consumers During the Pandemic? An Examination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hear testimony from Kraninger in a similar hearing at 10 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, July 29, titled The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Semiannual Report to Congress.
These hearings are a valuable opportunity for ACA to connect with members of Congress on behalf of the industry and shed light on legislation and regulatory matters impacting ARM professionals, especially as the CFPB moves forward on its proposed debt collection rule said to be released in October 2020.
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