The Koch Brothers Strike Again. The Target? Military Personnel
August 07, 2015
Categories:
VA
An organization bankrolled by the notorious Koch Brothers is arguing that predatory payday lenders should be allowed to take advantage of our men and women in uniform.
The Obama administration last month expanded the Military Lending Act (MLA) to protect service members from predatory lending practices after reports that many of them paid up to 700% interest for the life of their loans. The MLA was enacted in 2006, but lenders found loopholes to circumvent the law and charge interest rates in the triple digits. The change redefines the kinds of loans that fall under the MLA, which caps the interest service members and their families pay at 36%.
But the Koch Brothers-funded conservative think-tank Mercatus Center at George Mason University said there shouldn’t be any cap and service members should have to pay the ridiculously high interest rates.
Mercatus Center is one of the brothers’ front organizations that push changes in public policy to benefit big corporations.
Another Koch Brothers-funded group, Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), is promoting a long list of anti-VA, anti-worker proposals that would break this sacred promise and leave veterans out to dry. Led by former Wall Street bank employee and failed Senate candidate Pete Hegseth, CVA has been the driving force behind efforts to dismantle the VA health care system and trim service members’ hard-earned disability and other benefits.
Unlike veterans groups whose mission is to provide critical services to veterans across America, CVA seems only to be concerned with promoting the Koch Brothers’ radical political agenda in Washington, D.C. In exchange for the millions in funding they’ve received from the groups associated with the infamous anti-government billionaires, they are also waging a campaign to reform Social Security and Medicare which veterans and their families heavily rely on, and government spending overall. In Koch-speak, “reform” means “cut relentlessly and put the rest toward tax breaks for the wealthy.”
