Adrian Kraus/AP Photo
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) introduces former Vice President Mike Pence and Karen Pence to speak to Army 10th Mountain Division soldiers in Fort Drum, New York, January 17, 2021.
A few hours before House Republicans voted overwhelmingly to promote Elise Stefanik to the party’s third-ranking post—that of chair of their caucus—that very same caucus, as well as Stefanik herself, voted on a straight party line against the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act. The bill includes a provision that would protect military service members from predatory debt collection.
Republicans voting against a Democratic bill, especially one authored by Maxine Waters, would generally come as no surprise, especially as their opposition was not enough to prevent the bill from passing the House and moving to the Senate. But Stefanik’s vote against fairer debt collection protection for service members hurts her own constituency uniquely. Her district, New York’s 21st, includes Fort Drum, the huge Army base with some 13,000 residents in upstate New York. It’s one of the largest bases in the Northeast. The GOP’s opposition, especially from the party’s rising stars, to protecting active-duty military members from financial stress—even those, in Stefanik’s case, within their own district—marks a drastic shift in the party’s position.
Active-duty military members have long been targets for predatory lending in its various guises; payday lending storefronts often proliferate around military bases. That’s also why strong regulatory protections for service members have been a priority for Congress on a bipartisan basis. In 2006, the Military Lending Act established a hard cap of 36 percent on interest rates for consumer loans and got rid of prepayment penalties for service members. Before that, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, enacted in 2003 and amended several times thereafter, provided protections on rental agreements, security deposits, evictions, foreclosures, and more, for active-duty military members. Both of those programs passed into law with significant bipartisan support. The Military Lending Act was even introduced by Sens. Jim Talent (R-MO) and Bill Nelson (D-FL).
Indeed, Stefanik’s predecessor, John McHugh, was one of those Republicans who supported the troops by voting for bills that protected them from predatory financial practices. McHugh represented the region between 1993 and 2009, when he was a member of the House Armed Services Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, after which he left to serve as Obama’s secretary of the Army. (New York redistricted in 2011.) Stefanik now sits on both committees as well.
Strong regulatory protections for service members have been a priority for Congress on a bipartisan basis.
But McHugh, who endorsed Stefanik’s re-election bid last year, was a very different Republican from a different Republican Party. And while he built a reputation based on his concern for America’s military, once a sacred tenet of GOP politics, Stefanik has amassed her political standing through her abiding commitment to Donald Trump, who himself was often at loggerheads with the military, famously mocking John McCain and soldiers and sailors who died in World War I. Stefanik, of course, won her caucus chairmanship after the party booted Trump critic Liz Cheney from that position, and because Stefanik made clear her loyalty to the 2020 Republican “platform”: Whatever Trump says, goes.
In voting against the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act, Stefanik and all her Republican colleagues voted against a provision that would have formally outlawed some of the most manipulative debt collection practices aimed at service members, including threatening to call one’s commanding officer in order to pressure a borrower into paying. “One of the tried-and-true methods of debt collectors is leading borrowers to believe they could lose their security clearance or job if they don’t pay,” said Seth Frotman, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center and former senior adviser to Holly Petraeus (wife of Gen. David Petraeus) at the Servicemember Affairs department of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Every service member was petrified of this, and often people just paid it off, even if they didn’t owe.”
The Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act would make that tactic illegal. It would also enact some low-hanging reform on student debt, including standardizing a provision that forgives student debt if a borrower becomes permanently disabled. Currently, federal student loan debt is forgiven in such a situation, but private student loans are not, which can trap disabled borrowers in a lifetime of inescapable indebtedness.
Stefanik’s particular willingness to vote against a bill that would so clearly help her constituents before being promoted to the highest-ranked woman in the House GOP astounds.
While it may not be surprising to see Republicans opposing student debt relief, protection for military debtors is a different story. “You used to see a shared commitment to ensuring that the people defending our country shouldn’t be looking over their shoulders worried about debt collectors,” said Frotman. “Proposals like this would be a significant step to make sure people in the military aren’t getting ripped off and aren’t the target of financial scammers and predatory lenders.”
But Trump’s Republican Party, which he has run in social media exile, appears even more partisan than previous iterations, which helps explain why the entire House caucus voted against a bill that not that long ago would have proven undeniable for at least some of the membership.
Still, Stefanik’s particular willingness to vote against a bill that would so clearly help her constituents as one of her last actions before being promoted to the highest-ranked woman in the House GOP astounds. It clearly demonstrates how loyalty to Trump eviscerates all other concerns, including heeding constituent needs and supporting the troops.
Though the bill survived passage in the House thanks to the narrow Democratic majority, its universal repudiation by House Republicans makes it very unlikely that it will pass through the Senate with the required 60 votes. And if Republicans can’t come around to work with Democrats on supporting the military, it makes it all but impossible that Joe Biden’s bipartisan olive branch will be well received on thornier issues like public spending for infrastructure. Even with Trump on the sidelines, this is still—perhaps more than ever—Trump’s party.
