Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doesn't understand why unpaid federal workers are going to food banks when it would be so easy to just get a loan to cover their expenses until the government reopens and Congress gets them their back pay. Here’s one reason: The emergency loans available from the credit union at Ross’s own Commerce Department are charging 9 percent interest.
Sure, employees of the department can get a loan of up to $5,000 with up to two years to repay it at rates “as low as 8.99 percent” … but that’s not exactly one of the “very, very low-interest-rate loans” Ross insisted were easy for federal workers to obtain. Such loans do exist—at, for instance, the Navy Federal Credit Union and U.S. Bank—but not from Mr. Let Them Eat Loans’ department.
To put Ross’ comments in perspective, he’s a guy who feels so inadequate for only having around $700 million that he’s lied to inflate himself into a billionaire. But he thinks he’s in a position to give people living paycheck-to-missing-paycheck advice about how they should feel about paying interest on loans they shouldn’t have to get to begin with. While his own department charges significant interest.
Yet another perfect encapsulation of the Trump administration’s view of working people.