Over three decades of watching the Legislature, I have been horrified as, one after another, the few protections Texas provided for its poorest residents were systematically eroded or abolished entirely.

In 1999, I wrote that illegal payday loans were trapping desperate Texans into ever-growing debt from some 150 locations. And that on Wall Street — where several Texas-based payday loan chains were delivering stellar returns — these "sub-prime lenders" were being hailed for providing a valuable service for those with no access to conventional banks.

Invented in Tennessee in the 1980s, payday lending was already becoming the national scourge when it was introduced in Texas.

Typically, cash-strapped Texans borrowed $300 or less until the next payday, in a week or two, for a "fee" that was really interest of several hundred percent.

It was "secured" with a post-dated check for the amount due, but since the checks were often worthless, the threat of criminal hot-check charges — and banks' insufficient funds charges — led borrowers into rolling over their tiny notes repeatedly, each time incurring larger charges. And local law enforcement agencies were being turned into the debt collectors.

To circumvent Texas' constitutional usury ban that limits interest rates to 10 percent, payday lenders claimed that instead of interest, they were collecting "handling charges" for purchasing borrowers' appliances or autos, and "lease fees" because the borrowers were still using the "sold" property. An even stranger subterfuge had borrowers buying pricy print ads in books seen by only the lenders, if published at all.

Flush with profits, the payday lending industry hired a virtual army of high-dollar lobbyists that defeated efforts to outlaw these loans entirely, and almost got legislators to legalize them.

By 2000, payday lending was spreading so rapidly that state regulators were swamped with complaints, but then-Attorney General John Cornyn filed only a few showcase indictments.

Finally, in the guise of "regulating" this illegal but widespread lending practice, the Texas Finance Commission effectively legalized payday loans by adopting regulations that limit payday loan "fees" and the number of times a loan could be rolled over, and banned law enforcement agencies from collecting the payday borrowers' worthless checks.

With this, payday lending chains grew rapidly, squeezing many mom-and-pop lenders out and bringing banks from states without usury limits into Texas — along with their usurious interest rates.

Today, payday loans are being offered at over 1,500 locations.

Two weeks ago, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said that it would proceed with a proposal to limit the 12 banks involved in out-of-state payday lending from making more than six loans to any borrower over a year, sending the stocks of Ace Cash Express, EZCorp, Cash America, and First Financial Services — all Texas-based payday lenders — into a nosedive.

But unless more opposition develops against House Bill 846, which the Texas House is expected to approve next week, these payday lending giants will finally get state laws changed to allow them to ignore their pretense, while eliminating the few surviving mom-and-pop lenders, reducing the money they now share with out-of-state banks and sending the payday lending giants' Texas profits to even greater heights.

Stay tuned for the details.