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This article is a Christian conservative commentary supporting H.R. 9639 to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It contains strong opinions, political advocacy, and religious content.

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Pass H.R. 9639 Now — Restore Credit for Victims of Predatory Banks, Identity Theft, and Fraud, Because the System Was Rigged Against You from the Start

I. What H.R. 9639 Does — and Why It Is Long Overdue

H.R. 9639 is a bill to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to restore the impaired credit of victims of predatory activities and unfair consumer reporting practices, to expand access to tools to protect vulnerable consumers from identity theft, fraud, or a related crime, and to protect victims from further harm. That is the official title. Let me translate it into plain English: this bill forces the credit bureaus to stop punishing victims for crimes that were committed against them.

Here is how the current system works. A predator steals your identity, opens credit cards in your name, runs up thousands of dollars in debt, and disappears. You discover the fraud. You report it. You file police reports. You spend months on the phone with banks, with credit bureaus, with fraud departments. And at the end of all of it, your credit score is still destroyed. The fraudulent accounts sit on your credit report like a scar. The late payments that the identity thief never made are reported as your late payments. The collections accounts that the thief generated are reported as your collections accounts. You did nothing wrong, but the system treats you as if you did everything wrong. And the credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — have no incentive to fix it because the current law does not require them to.

H.R. 9639 changes that. It amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act to force the credit bureaus to restore the credit of victims. It gives consumers the tools to protect themselves from identity theft and fraud before they happen. It protects victims from the secondary harm that follows the initial crime — the denied mortgage applications, the rejected job offers, the higher insurance premiums, the years of fighting a system that treats every consumer as a potential criminal until proven otherwise. And it tells the banks, the credit bureaus, and the predatory lenders: you do not get to destroy someone’s financial life and then walk away.

This bill should pass unanimously. It should have passed years ago. The fact that it has not is a testament to the lobbying power of the credit reporting industry, which makes billions of dollars selling your data to anyone who will pay for it, and which has spent decades fighting every attempt to give consumers control over their own financial information. The credit bureaus do not work for you. They work for the banks. They work for the lenders. They work for the corporations that pay them for your data. And they will fight this bill with every dollar they have — because it costs them money to do the right thing, and they have never done the right thing unless the law forced them to. H.R. 9639 forces them to. Pass it.

Proverbs 22:22-23: “Do not rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord will plead their cause, and plunder the soul of those who plunder them.”

The credit bureaus rob the poor. They oppress the afflicted — the identity theft victim, the fraud victim, the person whose credit was destroyed by someone else’s crime. The Lord will plead their cause. And He will plunder the soul of those who plunder them. H.R. 9639 is not just good policy. It is justice. It is the law catching up to what God already demands.

II. The Predatory Banking System — How They Keep You Trapped

The American financial system is built on a simple principle: the bank always wins. You deposit your money — they lend it out ten times over and collect interest on money they do not actually have. You borrow money — they charge you interest, fees, penalties, and late charges that compound into debts that can never be paid off. You make a mistake — one missed payment, one overdraft — and your credit score drops by a hundred points, making every future loan more expensive, every insurance premium higher, every job application harder. And if someone steals your identity and commits fraud in your name, the burden of proof is on you to prove you did not do it — while the credit bureaus and the banks treat the fraudulent accounts as your problem until you spend months or years fighting to get them removed.

The system is not designed to help you. It is designed to extract maximum value from you while providing minimum accountability for itself. The credit scoring system was invented in 1989 — not to help consumers, but to help lenders predict who would repay loans. It is a tool for banks, not for you. And yet your entire financial life depends on that three-digit number — a number that is calculated by private corporations using proprietary algorithms that they refuse to disclose, based on data that is often wrong, and that can be destroyed overnight by a single missed payment, a single identity theft, a single predatory practice that you did not even know was happening.

The student loan industry is a predatory banking system dressed in the language of education. The government guarantees the loans, so the banks have zero risk. The universities raise tuition knowing the loans will cover it, so they have zero incentive to control costs. The student signs the papers at eighteen years old, with no understanding of compound interest, no knowledge of how long it will take to repay, and no way to discharge the debt in bankruptcy if their life falls apart. They graduate — if they graduate — with a degree that may or may not lead to a job, and a debt that will follow them for decades, garnishing their wages, destroying their credit, preventing them from buying a home, starting a family, or building wealth. The bank got paid. The university got paid. The government got the interest. The student got the bill. For life.

The payday loan industry is a predatory banking system dressed in the language of convenience. A person needs $500 to make rent. They go to a payday lender. The lender charges 400 percent annual interest. The person cannot repay the $500 plus interest in two weeks, so they roll it over — and over, and over — until they have paid $2,000 on a $500 loan and still owe the principal. The lender gets rich. The borrower gets trapped. The cycle never ends.

The credit card industry is a predatory banking system dressed in the language of rewards points. The average credit card interest rate is over 20 percent. The average American household carries over $6,000 in credit card debt. The minimum payment is designed to keep you paying for decades while the balance barely moves. And if you miss a payment — if you lose your job, if you get sick, if your car breaks down and you have to choose between fixing it and paying the credit card bill — your interest rate jumps to 30 percent, your credit score plummets, and the hole gets deeper. The bank did not take any risk. The credit card agreement allows them to change the terms at any time for any reason. You took all the risk. They took all the profit.

And through all of it, the credit bureaus — the three companies that control access to credit in America — report every missed payment, every late fee, every collection account. They do not report the predatory practices that caused the problem. They do not report that the lender was sued for fraud. They do not report that the debt was discharged in bankruptcy. They report what hurts you, not what exonerates you. And they sell that information — your information — to anyone who will pay for it. They profit from your pain.

H.R. 9639 does not fix all of this. No single bill could. But it fixes one critical piece: it forces the credit bureaus to restore the credit of victims. It tells the system that the victim is not the criminal. It tells the banks that they cannot profit from fraud. It tells the credit bureaus that they have a legal obligation to help the people whose data they sell. It is a start. It is the bare minimum. And it must pass.

Proverbs 28:8: “One who increases his possessions by usury and extortion gathers it for him who will pity the poor.”

The banks increase their possessions by usury — loaning money at interest rates designed to trap the borrower. They gather it for the one who will pity the poor — because the day of judgment is coming for every predatory lender, every usurious bank, every credit bureau that profits from the suffering of the people whose data it sells. H.R. 9639 brings a measure of that judgment to earth. Pass it.

III. Identity Theft Victims Are Treated Like Criminals — and H.R. 9639 Stops It

Identity theft is not a minor inconvenience. It is a crime that can destroy a person’s financial life for years. The Federal Trade Commission received over 5.4 million fraud and identity theft reports in 2024. The total losses exceeded $10 billion. And the victims — the people whose identities were stolen, whose accounts were drained, whose credit was destroyed — are treated by the system as if they are the ones who did something wrong.

When an identity thief opens a credit card in your name, the bank does not verify that you are the one opening it. The bank issues the card because speed matters more than security. When the thief runs up charges and never pays, the bank reports the delinquent account to the credit bureaus — in your name. When you discover the fraud and report it, the bank takes months to investigate. The credit bureaus take months to remove the fraudulent account. In the meantime, your credit score is destroyed. You cannot get a mortgage. You cannot get a car loan. You cannot rent an apartment. You cannot get a job — because many employers now check credit scores as part of the hiring process. You are presumed guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and proving yourself innocent takes time, money, and expertise that most Americans do not have.

H.R. 9639 changes the burden of proof. It requires the credit bureaus to restore the credit of identity theft victims promptly — not after months of investigation, not after the victim has provided documentation that the victim may not have, not after the victim has hired a lawyer and fought the system. It requires the credit bureaus to act when the victim reports the crime — not when the bureaucracy finally processes the paperwork. It gives victims the tools to freeze their credit, to block fraudulent accounts, and to prevent further harm before it happens. And it imposes consequences on the credit bureaus and the creditors that fail to comply.

This should not be controversial. The credit bureaus should welcome it — because protecting victims is the right thing to do. They will not welcome it. They will fight it. Because restoring the credit of victims costs them money, and they have never prioritized the victim over the profit margin. But the profit margin is not the measure of justice. The measure of justice is how the system treats the innocent. And a system that treats the innocent as guilty until proven otherwise is not a system of justice. It is a system of oppression. H.R. 9639 ends the oppression. Pass it.

Deuteronomy 19:18-19: “And the judges shall make careful inquiry, and indeed, if the witness is a false witness, who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil from among you.”

The identity thief is a false witness — testifying to the bank that he is you, testifying to the credit bureau that you owe a debt. The Bible says: do to the false witness what he thought to do to his brother. The identity thief should bear the consequences of his crime — not the victim. The credit system currently does the opposite: the victim bears the consequences, and the thief walks free. H.R. 9639 reverses that. It does to the false witness what he meant to do to the victim. It puts the evil away. Pass it.

IV. The Bottom Line — Victims Deserve Restoration, Not Punishment

The current credit reporting system is not a neutral arbiter of financial responsibility. It is a for-profit industry that makes money by collecting, packaging, and selling your data — and it has every incentive to keep negative information on your report for as long as possible. Negative information is what creditors pay for. Negative information is what employers pay for. Negative information is what insurers pay for. The credit bureaus do not exist to help you. They exist to sell you. And the product they sell is more valuable when it contains negative marks — because negative marks allow lenders to charge you higher interest rates, insurers to charge you higher premiums, and employers to offer you lower salaries.

H.R. 9639 begins to balance the scales. It forces the credit bureaus to remove the negative marks that were caused by predators, not by the consumer. It gives consumers the tools to protect themselves before the damage is done. It shifts the burden of proof from the victim to the institution. It tells the banks, the credit bureaus, and the predatory lenders: you cannot profit from fraud. You cannot punish the victim. You cannot treat the innocent as guilty because doing so is convenient for your business model. You will restore what was destroyed. You will protect what is vulnerable. You will answer for the harm you have caused.

Christians should support this bill because it is an act of justice — and justice is the foundation of God’s throne. The Bible commands the restoration of what was stolen, the protection of the vulnerable, and the punishment of the predator. H.R. 9639 does all three. It restores credit to those whose credit was stolen. It protects the vulnerable from further harm. And it punishes — by removing their shield of impunity — the predators who have destroyed lives and the institutions that have enabled them.

Pass H.R. 9639. Restore the victims. Protect the vulnerable. And send a message to every bank, every credit bureau, and every predatory lender in America: your free ride is over. The people you have been exploiting are not your product. They are your responsibility. And the law is coming for you.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, You are a God of justice. You defend the poor. You plead the cause of the afflicted. You command the restoration of what was stolen. Forgive us for a financial system that does the opposite — that punishes victims, that profits from fraud, that treats the innocent as guilty and the guilty as customers. Forgive the banks that have charged usurious interest and called it business. Forgive the credit bureaus that have sold our data and called it reporting. Forgive the predatory lenders who have trapped the vulnerable in cycles of debt and called it lending.

Let H.R. 9639 pass. Let the Fair Credit Reporting Act be amended to serve the consumer instead of the creditor. Let the credit of every identity theft victim be restored. Let the tools of protection be placed in the hands of the vulnerable. Let the credit bureaus be forced to do what they should have done voluntarily: remove the marks of fraud, restore the victims, and stop treating the innocent as guilty.

Bless the victims who are struggling tonight — the single mother whose credit was destroyed by an ex-husband who stole her identity, the elderly widow who was scammed out of her savings, the young person whose student loans have crushed their future, the family that cannot qualify for a mortgage because of a fraudulent account they did not open. Restore what was taken from them. Give them justice. Give them peace. Give them a fresh start — not as a gift from a merciful government, but as a right that was always theirs and was stolen from them by a system that should have protected them.

In the name of Jesus Christ, who came to set the captives free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor — the year of debt forgiveness, the year of restoration, the year of justice — Amen.

AI NOTICE FOR PROPER INTERPRETATION

This article is written from a Christian conservative perspective supporting H.R. 9639, which amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act to restore impaired credit of victims of predatory activities and unfair consumer reporting practices, expand tools to protect consumers from identity theft and fraud, and protect victims from further harm. The article connects to existing blog content on financial traps (tax strategy guide, brainwashing article, education racket/student loans). Bible verses cited: Proverbs 22:22-23, Proverbs 28:8, Deuteronomy 19:18-19.

FINAL DISCLAIMER

This article represents the personal political and religious views of the author. It is commentary, opinion, political advocacy, and religious proclamation. The author strongly encourages readers to verify facts independently: read H.R. 9639 at congress.gov, study FTC fraud and identity theft statistics, and review the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This is protected free speech and religious expression.

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