Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, today, along with Senators Schumer, Menendez, Warner, Merkley, Warren, Blumenthal, Franken, Durbin, Kaine, and Hirono, I am introducing the Military Consumer Protection Act, which reinforces our commitment to consumer protections for servicemembers.

Our country has a strong tradition of ensuring that our servicemembers are protected while they sacrifice to keep our Nation safe. Building on such efforts, Congress passed the Soldiers' and Sailor's Civil Relief Act as World War II escalated to provide crucial financial protections for servicemembers to ``enable such persons to devote their entire energy to the defense needs of the Nation.'' Now called the Servicemember Civil Relief Act, SCRA, this law includes such protections as prohibiting the eviction of servicemembers and their dependents from rental or mortgaged properties and capping the interest at 6 percent on debts incurred prior to an individual entering active duty military service.

Despite the SCRA's importance, enforcement of this critical law has been found to be inconsistent and subject to the discretion of our financial regulators. Indeed, misinformation, lapses, and mistakes that the SCRA was intended to fix continue to persist. Moreover, according to a July 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office, ``in 2010, examinations for SCRA compliance occurred in an estimated 26 percent of all [financial] institutions, compared with 2007 when about 4 percent of all institutions were reviewed for SCRA.''

Without a change in the law, SCRA enforcement will continue to be subject to the changing priorities of the financial regulators. Simply put, prioritizing the consumer protection of our servicemembers should not be discretionary. It should be mandatory, and my legislation ensures that SCRA enforcement will be a permanent priority for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB, which Congress created to enforce Federal consumer financial protection laws.

In 2010, as we were debating the creation of the CFPB, I led the bipartisan effort to ensure it would contain a key role in protecting servicemembers through the establishment of an Office of Servicemember Affairs. Since that time, the CFPB has coordinated with other enforcement agencies and regulators to help servicemembers recover millions in relief from unscrupulous actors in the financial marketplace. With this demonstrated record of success in protecting our servicemembers, the CFPB is an ideal focal point for enforcement of certain key SCRA provisions, such as the protections against default judgments and the maximum rate of interest on debts incurred before military service.

As we take steps to protect our servicemembers, we should do all we can to make sure there is a strong watchdog on the beat that can enforce the protections we have put in place. Our legislation is supported by the National Guard Association of the United States, the National Military Family Association, the Military Officers Association of America, Americans for Financial Reform, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Action, the National Consumer Law Center, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. I urge our colleagues to help honor our commitment to our Nation's servicemembers by joining us in this effort to improve the supervision and enforcement of the SCRA.

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