Consumer Protection
Nearly 93,000 families across the Pacific Northwest are getting their final expanded child tax credit payment of this year Wednesday. Over the past six months, families have received up to $300 for every child they claimed on their 2020 tax returns. The Biden administration believes the advanced credit payments lifted millions of American kids out of poverty this year.
A long-time program promised to forgive federal student loans for people who have worked in public service and made loan payments for 10 years. But that's not the way the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, or PSLF, has worked for borrowers.
Plans for a business resource center run under the Columbia Economic Team are moving forward, as the project has secured commitments for $150,000 in local dollars to match federal and state funding sources. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici earmarked $175,000 for the resource center in an appropriations bill that passed the House and is now awaiting Senate action.
U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Representatives Peter DeFazio and Suzanne Bonamici have called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take all statutory eligibilities into account when distributing $10 billion in aid to agricultural producers hit hard by extreme heat, drought and wildfires this summer.
Recently an Oregon mother told me that "if child care crumbles, if it gets even a fraction more difficult to find, then our collective ability to work crumbles too." Finding quality care for her children was so time-consuming it felt like a second job.
"It is unacceptable that predatory debt collectors have been able to take advantage of this program, diverting funding away from small businesses that desperately need help during this economic crisis," said Bonamici, who was once employed as a consumer protection attorney at the Federal Trade Commission.