House Republican leaders say they’re not interested in the limits the governor and attorney general are seeking on the car title loan industry. Governor Tom Vilsack and Attorney General Tom Miller say companies like LoanMax are “predatory lenders” who charge interest rates of up to 300 percent. House Speaker Christopher Rants, a Republican from Sioux City, says the call for a 21 percent limit on such loans isn’t going to pass the House.
Rants says if you look at the disclosure forms that people fill out when they take out a car title loan, you’ll see that they do have full disclosure of the terms of the loan. Rants says a car title loan is no different in his mind than those tax refund advance loans, payday loans or credit card applications sent to people who already have a “healthy balance” on their current plastic. “Sometimes you can’t be a nanny state that just protects people from themselves,” Rants says.