President Trump has released his fiscal 2019 budget, and he's not calling it the "hard power" budget or the "skinny" budget -- see? He learns! -- but he is calling it "An American Budget," which is more offensive, since his budget doesn't reflect the priorities of Americans, but of Our Glorious Elites, who do not get all the say about everything in America. This budget would not only slash EPA funding by a third and slash food stamps and eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program -- it would also cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, because he's already won Florida and won't need to win it again until 2020. Congress has already funded our government for the next two years, so this budget is DOA. But the "ideas" in it aren't -- they keep getting up no matter how many headshots we give them. So Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trump Un-American Budget.
Meanwhile, the House is mulling H.R. 3299, the so-called Protecting Consumers' Access to Credit Act, which would amend several federal laws to ensure that "(a) loan that is valid when made as to its maximum rate of interest in accordance with this subsection shall remain valid with respect to such rate regardless of whether the loan is subsequently sold, assigned, or otherwise transferred to a third party, and may be enforced by such third party notwithstanding any State law to the contrary." What that ultimately means, however, is that such a loan could blow right past any state caps on interest rates, thus rendering them meaningless. Now there's "small government" for you! H.R. 3299 doesn't "protect consumers' access to credit," it protects loansharks' access to their borrowers' money, never mind whether it's usurious or not. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to actually protect consumers by rejecting H.R. 3299.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject S. 2155, the so-called Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. They call it a bill that loosens restraints on community banks by raising the threshold of heightened regulatory scrutiny from $50 billion to $250 billion in assets, but that's a load of bollocks, unless we redefine the phrase "community banks" to include corporations like Credit Suisse and American Express do. Why, they're community banks with a glandular problem! The bill would also let smaller banks indulge in higher-risk mortgages, because that's what smaller banks need: more leeway to do things that would harm them and their customers. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the greatest enemy of the small bank isn't Big Gummint, but the big bankster. So let's push Congress to fight the real enemy.
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