Washington, D.C. — Bank Policy Institute President and CEO Greg Baer released the following statement on Senate passage of a bill to protect CARES Act recovery payments from garnishment.
Stimulus payments were intended to be a lifeline for individuals and families experiencing economic hardship due to the coronavirus, not a windfall for debt collectors. We thank leadership in the Senate for working on a bipartisan basis with the National Consumer Law Center and the banking industry to fix this unintended consequence to ensure that stimulus money ends up in the hands of Americans struggling to get through the coronavirus crisis.
In April, BPI and the National Consumer Law Center, along with a coalition of banking industry organizations and consumer groups, sent a letter advocating for legislative changes to how garnishments were treated under the CARES Act.
