Operation Choke Point is a government initiative designed to shut down
businesses operating in supposed “
high-risk” industries, as determined by the
U.S Department of Justice and the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
by intimidating financial institutions
into denying them service.
First announced in 2013, Operation
Choke Point has increasingly cast its
shadow over collection agencies. In the
last year, ACA International has heard
from many association members whose
banks have closed their accounts due to
Operation Choke Point.
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (
R-Mo.) is a member of the House
Financial Services Committee as well as
a member of the Small Business
Committee. He has been one of the key
members of Congress working to bring
attention to Operation Choke Point,
which until quite recently has remained
under the public radar. In March,
Luetkemeyer reintroduced legislation to
end Operation Choke Point.
Collector spoke to Luetkemeyer to
learn why Operation Choke Point is so
dangerous for the credit and collection
industry, and how he thinks ACA
members can help fight it.
Why was it important to you to introduce
legislation to put an end to Operation
Choke Point?
Operation Choke Point is about
driving existing, legitimate businesses
out of business—hurting people’s ability
to make a living, unemploying people,
depriving our citizens of services that
they want. This is the antithesis of who
we are as Americans, as far as I’m
concerned.
But it’s very difficult to [draw
Operation Choke Point
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer is leading the charge against a program that threatens the collection industry
attention to what’s going on] because
the banks don’t want anybody to know
that they are being targeted, and that
they are having some problems with the
FDIC or Department of Justice,
because they don’t want retribution
from the examiners. They are caught in
the middle.
We tried to work with [the FDIC
and DOJ], and they placated us with
some letters and information to send to
examiners that they shouldn’t be doing
this—they call it clarifications of
procedures—but obviously that wasn’t
enough because [Operation Choke
Point] was continuing, so we put
together a bill.
I think it’s important that we
continue down this road for a couple
different reasons. Number one, to show
that we’re not going to go away.
Second, the entrepreneurial spirit of
[the American] people is to go out and
take risks and start businesses—it’s who
we are. And to have the government
pick the winners and losers between
businesses—who can exist and who
can’t based on [someone’s] ideology and
moral judgments and value systems—
it’s contrary to who we are [as
Americans].
[The FDIC and DOJ] have used
their position as regulators to
implement their own personal agenda.
That is wrong, so we’re hell bent on
continuing [to push this legislation].
I’m not going to give up. We are going
to shake every tree, and I’m going to
keep pushing until I get this thing done.
How is Operation Choke Point affecting
businesses in the credit and collection
industry?
What Operation Choke Point is all
about is cutting off financial services to
industries—not individuals, but entire
industries.
The Department of Justice’s emails
say they are trying to do something
about money laundering, which is a
worthwhile goal and I support that.
The problem is that their emails say,
‘We don’t have enough resources to go
after [bad actors] one by one, therefore
we’ll target everyone in the industry to
get the bad guys, and the good guys will
be collateral damage.’
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work with
me. That is not acceptable. Legitimate
businesses should not be collateral
damage.
If there are bad actors in any industry,
I support going after them. But I don’t
support getting rid of an entire industry
of people. That is crazy. And the credit
and collection industry is on their list.
The FDIC took down [its supervisory
list of 30 “high risk” industries] because
they were tired of having people see
what they were doing. So now we have a
lack of transparency.
In fact, they’ve since expanded that
affairs
By Anne Rosso