March 07, 2016
John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock and candidate for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat, is calling for Democratic National Committee Chair to resign.
In a petition on Fetterman's campaign website, he says Debbie Wasserman Schultz should step down because of her co-sponsorship of a bill that would delay regulations on payday lenders.
The petition asks signers to tell Wasserman Schultz the following: "You have abandoned the values of the Democratic Party and betrayed the most vulnerable members of society who depend on our party to fight for them. I urge you to resign from your position as DNC Chair immediately."
It's ridiculous that the leader of the Democratic Party would turn her back on some of the most vulnerable members of society.
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) March 7, 2016
Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative from Florida, put her name behind legislation that would push rules on payday lending back two years and nix the rules in states with their own payday lending laws.
The rules have been proposed by the recently formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency established by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Payday loans are short-term, unsecured cash advances which usually accumulate very high-interest rates. They are illegal in Pennsylvania.
Fetterman claims the lenders of these loans target "desperate, mostly poor customers with the promise of quick money."
Wasserman Schultz's spokesperson defended the legislation in a statement to the Huffington Post earlier this month, claiming when she was a state lawmaker in Florida she helped shape a bill that regulates the loans.
Florida would be one of the state's exempt from the CFPB regulations under the proposed legislation.
Consumer groups told the Post that the Florida law has not ended a cycle in which borrowers get sucked into continually paying higher and higher interest rates and have to take out more loans.
Those groups were also critical of the newly proposed bill, according to the website.
Fetterman is running against Katie McGinty and Joe Sestak for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Pat Toomey.
Neither Fetterman’s campaign nor Wasserman Schultz’s congressional office immediately responded to a request for comment Monday afternoon.
