A new report by the Washington Post reveals that the Senate has voted to rollback a regulation set in place by former President Barack Obama that fights against auto loan race-based discrimination. The final vote was held at Capitol Hill on Wednesday, with 51 senators voting to move forward with the bill and 47 voting against it — a vote that was largely along party lines with the exception of West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin III.
The bill was first introduced on March 22 by Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican, who claims that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was hurting the auto industry because of the legislation.
“The CFPB wrongly used its over-reaching indirect auto-lending guidance as an enforcement weapon, proceeding down the path of an aggressive enforcement action in search of ‘market-tipping settlements,” Moran said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
According to the Washington Post, The CFPB believes that auto dealers would charge Black and Hispanic borrowers more for an auto loan than a White person even if they had the same credit score. Several auto lenders were fined millions of dollars by the federal agency for discrimination according to the report. These watchdog tactics by the federal agency is what led Senator Moran and others in Congress voting for the new legislation to believe that auto lenders feared being fined thus freezing their willingness to offer discounts, or any other benefits to those seeking auto loans.
“They may try to dress it up with political spin, but today the Senate endorsed discrimination,” Karl Frisch, executive director of the consumer watchdog organization Allied Progress told the Washington Post.
With the bill now passing the Senate, the House of Representatives will take a vote on the legislation before it reaches President Trump‘s desk. There is no reason to believe this bill will not be easily passed through the majority republican House and signed by President Trump.
