Obama Wants to Let Debt Collectors Call Your Cellphone

Here's more bad news for people who still owe student loans or back taxes, and who now rely exclusively on their cellphones. President Barack Obama wants to make it easier for private debt collectors to call your cellphone and badger you into paying up.

The administration says opening cellphones to debt collectors will "provide substantial increases in collections, particularly as an increasing share of households no longer have landlines and rely instead on cellphones."

This recommendation is tucked away almost unnoticed in the mammoth $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan the president has submitted to Congress, and it would apply only to cases in which money is owed the government.

C0nsumer groups, privacy advocates, Democrats and Republicans are unanimous on this. They all hate it.  The debt collections industry is all for it because they get a healthy percentage of the money they collect.

Critics aren't buying the logic behind it. The National Consumer Law Center says allowing robo-calls to cellphones will just lead to more harassment and abuse of people who're mired in personal debt.

A spokeswoman says no matter what the administration claims, it won't help the government collect more money.  She says people who aren't paying their student loans or their taxes are in that fix because they can't find a job.

via News from The Associated Press.

Congressional Democrats are uneasy about this. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, and other House and Senate leaders won't say what they think of it.

Several aides say off the record that Democrats are between a rock and a hard place. They don't want to be seen as opposing President Obama, but they can't support this idea.

Although there's been no official Republican statement, it's safe to assume the GOP doesn't like it either.  They don't like anything in this huge bill and are vowing it will never pass.