The Huffington Post reports that President Obama is behind a plan which would give the private collection industry the ability to call the cell phones of consumers delinquent on student loans or other debt owed the federal government.
The change “is expected to provide substantial increases in collections, particularly as an increasing share of households no longer have landlines and rely instead on cellphones,” the administration wrote recently. The little-noticed recommendation would apply only to cases in which money is owed the government, and is tucked into the mammoth $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan the president submitted to Congress.
“Enabling robo-calls (to cellphones) is just going to lead to more harassment and abuse, and it’s not going to help the government collect more money,” said Lauren Saunders of the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center. “People aren’t paying their student loans because they can’t find a job.”
The effort is a result of many consumers cutting the expense of a land line and having their cell phone as the only phone.