At a Tennessee State House of Representatives sub-committee hearing on January 28th about legal funding, the NFIB (the National Federation of Independent Business – “Protecting the Future of Small Business”) sent their Nashville-based Tennessee spokesman Jim Brown to the podium to support the US Chamber of Commerce and the big insurance company special interests such as State Farm and Allstate in their advocacy to ban legal funding (aka lawsuit lending) in Tennessee. This is the same NFIB that supports and protects much more expensive consumer financial products in Tennessee, such as Title Loans, as long as they are paying members of NFIB. This story provides a little color into how state level lobbying "advocacy for hire" works.
The NFIB’s Nashville-based Tennessee spokesman Jim Brown started his testimony to the Tennessee House sub-committee with this following statement:
“We polled this question this summer this fall, 77% of our members we actually asked the question should you ban the industry which is actually been discussed in other states and may have actually occurred in some other states and 77% of our members support a ban of the industry. And that’s a pretty strong statement.”
How long did it take them to form their opinion on putting a rate cap on the legal funding industry to ban it from Tennessee? Let’s go to the tape:
“We got to the rate cap issue and we got to the rate cap position a little slower than some other organizations, but just to answer Chairman McManus’ question we had a meeting with our leadership council. In early January we spent 20 minutes on this issue.”
Ok, so it took 20 minutes for their leadership counsel to decide that a rate cap should be imposed on the industry in order to ban it. So if it only took the leadership counsel of the NFIB 20 minutes to decide to deny poor people in Tennessee from the choice of having a product that gives them access to money, how long must it have taken the other organizations? 20 minutes is apparently slow per the Nashville-based Tennessee spokesman for the NFIB Jim Brown. So does that mean the US Chamber of Commerce and the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, neither of whom represent the interest of consumers, only took 10 minutes? 5 minutes?
Then came this exchange:
Chairman Mike Turner: Can Jim Brown come back up here again please?
Jim Brown of NFIB: Yes, Sir Chairman Turner.
Chairman Mike Turner: How many members are in your organization?
Jim Brown of NFIB: We have 8200 in Tennessee.
Chairman Turner: Alright and how many of them are – 77% of them haven’t responded to the poll?
Jim Brown of NFIB: The original poll was 400 somewhat I believe you know I think we had more since that time, but…
Chairman Mike Turner: So you had an eighth. So to say that 77% of your members are opposed to this bill that’s not accurate or 77% of the people that responded are?
Jim Brown of NFIB: Very good question. We have our statistical people in our research center say that, if we get to a 5% member response, then we have a plus or minus 5% on that. So once we get to 5% then we can validate the [0:24:00] poll. Sometimes we get to 6%, 7%, 8% I don’t know where we are now but once we got to that 5% we need to come with information to the legislature and we did.
Chairman Mike Turner: So it’s about actually 5% of your members responded and so the other 95 % didn’t care.
Jim Brown of NFIB: Initially, but I don’t think…
Chairman Mike Turner: Well let me say this I don’t want to give you a hard time I was going to, but McLain [Phonetic] [0:24:18] is going to defend you if I do. So let me say this I’ve been on this committee 10 years and I’m glad to say that you guys are finally helping the consumers. For 10 years we’ve watched you come in and roll over consumers, but now you defend them I appreciate that. Thank you very much let me say this to you to generals, I have nothing but respect for [Inaudible] this is an unusual coalition. I’ve never seen this coalition come together and helped consumers before. I think consumers and you as a consumer in this case, is; kind of a stretch. We’re talking about plaintiffs here, we’re talking about agent workers and lawsuits and that’s what this is about. But I won’t take any more of your time Mr. Chairman I like you to give Mr. Brown every chance I get, but it’s just a powerful thing, thank you.
To recap, the NFIB's spokesman Jim Brown started his speech by characterizing that 77% of his 8200 members had weighed in on the subject of legal funding, only to be dressed down that only 400 members had responded and he defends his prior statement by stating that he was told a 5% response is statistically significant enough to project the views of 7800 members. And this ban is predicated on a one page survey that barely describes the product and gives no color on the consumer need or experience. Ask 8200 businesses a question such as “should we outlaw an activity that could make you spend more money on defending your business from litigation?”, and the Tennessee State House should be moved to action when a couple hundred of them respond yes? He even pointed out that one of the 400 respondents was in the district of one of the representatives. So a product being used by several thousand Tennessee consumers a year with no reported complaints should be banned from Tennessee because one small business constituent in one Representative’s district responded anonymously to a survey that barely scratched the surface of the question at hand? For a product they have never used or had any impact on them? And how does this stance forward the stated mission of the Tennessee based NFIB to protect the future of small business?
Got to love made to hire state level advocacy.