HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS Editorial: In one of the more brazen, underhanded maneuvers that took place during this year’s budget work in the Capitol, the Republican House leadership snuck a controversial last-minute wording change into the fiscal code bill. The change said the House and Senate leadership were committed to lifting Pennsylvania’s ban on the kind of loan-sharking known as “payday loans.”
That “commitment” was news to the Senate’s Republican leaders, who reacted with justifiable outrage. The sneaky change was discovered only when a sharp-eyed reviewer checking the fine print of the legislation found the obscurely-worded provision on page 55 of the 57-page bill.
This gross abuse of the legislative process led the Senate to reject the House’s tainted version of the entire fiscal code by a vote of 49-0. Even senators who want to legalize this exploitative lending voted against the fiscal code bill, an essential piece of budget legislation, because it included House Republicans’ devious gambit… (more)
