The City Counsel of Washington, DC has capped payday lending at a 24% annual rate, which will reign in an industry accustomed to charging upwards of 400%. As one Counsel Member told the Washington Post, "They don't provide short-term loans. They create long-term debt, and that's the whole point." In this film from the Center for Responsible Lending, a former manager of a payday lending service advises potential borrowers to “run,” since it’s not uncommon for borrowers to spend $3900 a year on $500. Since July, the industry has been launching an aggressive campaign insisting that payday lenders provide an important service for low-income people. According to one ad, a woman would not have been able to get her child medical attention without the loan. And, they truck out the usual argument (reminiscent from the bankruptcy-bill debates) that people who fall into debt are irresponsible. Unfortunately for their argument, though, this would have to include 99% of all borrowers.

The failure of the industry’s campaign bodes well, I hope, for healthcare reform, since the fatuous attacks on Hillary Clinton’s rather modest proposal by Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani (“government-controlled healthcare”) will be nothing compared to the Harry-and-Louise-reprise that we can expect from the industry once a proposal gets to Capital Hill. (You can watch some Harry-and-Louise ads from 1994 here.) Not to mention talk-radio. An editorial by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann on the FoxNews website portends what is to come: her plan, they argue, will fund healthcare for illegal immigrants and ration care. Let’s hope the healthcare free-marketeers continue to explain America’s 47 million uninsured as Morris and McGann do: “The bulk of the uninsured do not want to have to pay for insurance. They are healthy and don't want the added burden of health insurance.” Advertisements saying that payday loans help parents get medicine for their sick children are tragically laughable---just like the arguments against aggressive regulation of healthcare.