Press Conference With Rep. Carolyn Maloney; Rep. Keith Ellison; Rep. Walter Jones - Credit Card Reform

Press Conference

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REP. MALONEY: Thank you.

I'm Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and I'm joined by many of my colleagues that were part of this fight for three years to pass this bill.

Today is a victory for every American who holds a credit card. The president has asked for us to get this bill to his desk by Memorial Day, and with this vote, we will be doing just that, 361 of my colleagues just voted to get this bill to the president's desk because they recognize and know that this is one credit card bill the American people could not afford to let go past due.

I regret that added to it was the unrelated and dangerous gun bill, and we should not have had to do credit card reform at the barrel of a gun. We lost that vote, regretfully, and I am thrilled that I am joined by many of my colleagues. We formed a consumer caucus and the co-chair of that, along with myself was Keith Ellison.

Thank you, Keith.

REP. ELLISON: Well, Chairwoman Maloney, I just have to say hats off to you. You are an example of what a legislator should be and I am a tremendous fan of yours and thank you so much.

Let me say, I believe the very heart of a vibrant, prosperous America is a vibrant, strong middle class and yet as we've seen middle class people have stagnant wages. They turn to credit in order to make ends meet and what that means is that they've gone not only to refinances, but they've gone to credit cards.

And so at a time when American consumers, the American middle class is at a very desperate point, it's very disheartening to see all kinds of credit card manipulations and schemes, and what I mean by that is things that even the Federal Reserve, no bleeding heart entity has said are deceptive and unfair, things like double cycle billing, universal defaults, changing the due date in an arbitrary way, all things that shouldn't happen and the United States Congress today has said that they should not happen and shall not happen in the United States after the president signs this bill.

So hats off to Carolyn Maloney, who, yes she's very modest. She says it's a community effort, well, every community needs a leader and she's been our leader and I've been proud to follow her lead.

So thank you again.

REP. MALONEY: Thank you, Keith.

We had a strong bipartisan vote today, but when we started it was difficult to get bipartisan support, but Walter Jones was there from day one and has been a very important part of leading towards the passage of this consumer protection bill.

REP. JONES: Thank you.

I want to thank Carolyn Maloney as well because if you accomplish anything in Washington, particularly in the Congress, you've got to have a quarterback and she has quarterbacked this day in and day out, held the hearings and done everything that was absolutely necessary to show the American people that under her leadership that the new Congress does care about the consumer and I just want to say in closing that this has been, for me, to be a small part, a very small part. But for me, this is saying to the American consumer, there are those in Washington led by Carolyn Maloney and Chairman Barney Frank that care about what happens to the consumer. It's about simplifying a system that has become too complex for even college graduates to understand the fees and the charges, and yet, this sunshine that Carolyn Maloney has brought to this issue is going to make the life of many consumers in America less complicated and I think will help them save money, quite frankly.

So I thank this lady for being the quarterback to make this day become a Super Bowl reality for the consumer.

Thank you.

REP. MALONEY: Thank you. A rising star on the Financial Services Committee is Dan Maffei from the great state of New York. He was very helpful, very instrumental in helping to push this bill through the Congress. Thank you, Dan.

REP. MAFFEI: Thank you. And thank you to Carolyn Maloney and thanks to her leadership, Americans now when they go to use a credit card are going to know that it's a responsible lender and not a loan shark and that's what's happened in the past is that these credit card issuers have been allowed to basically be loan sharks, raise interest rates with not necessarily any reason, no notice on existing balances. All of that is put an end to by this bill.

So it's very, very important and the only other thing -- and I'm so pleased to be here with Mr. Ellison and Mr. Jones, but this was extraordinarily bipartisan and I know a lot of you have written a lot of stories about how nothing happens in Washington anymore and it's all partisan this and partisan that, well, I would submit to you that this is one huge counterexample of that. It wasn't always this way. When Mrs. Maloney started, a lot of people in our own party were extraordinarily skeptical, much less the other one. But now this is a tremendous bipartisan vote and it was even more bipartisan today than it was the last time it passed the House, I think it was 264 votes this time, and certainly, bipartisan in the Senate.

So this is an area where I feel Congress is listening to the American people, and we're going to have credit card companies operating like loan sharks anymore thanks to this bill.

REP. MALONEY: I want to thank everyone, and certainly, open it for questions that ends deceptive practices that have been called by the Federal Reserve unfair, deceptive and anti-competitive and the Federal Reserve also noted that notice was not enough, that you needed fundamental reform. We are bringing that fundamental reform to the American people with this strong vote in the House and in the Senate and I'm delighted to answer any questions.

Q What do you think was the difference between this year and last year when the bill didn't get through the Senate?

REP. MALONEY: I think there were two major reasons, one, was the support of our President Barack Obama, who championed this bill and put the sunshine and flashlight of the presidency and got behind, pushing it with meetings at the White House, public statements and his support was very instrumental and very, very important.

I would say that also the industry began raising rates even more than in the past on consumers. This was documented in a report that came out from one of the consumer groups and it got to the point where I literally could not walk down the street, go to the supermarket or ride the subway or even go to the floor of Congress where I was not told about interest rates being hiked substantially, retroactively on balances even when consumers were playing by the rules, paying on time and not going over the limit.

It seems that many cardholders started raising rates in anticipation of the rule change, in anticipation of the bill and it absolutely inflamed the public and every member of Congress listens to the people they represent and many Americans across America were saying, we need help.

I think, also, the financial crisis where we are so concerned, not only about stabilizing the financial institutions and about getting these financial institutions to get equity, to lend to the public, to get our economy going, that an important part of this is having consumers the ability to spend money in the economy. It helps the economy and consumers were seeing larger interest rates and fees that took their money as opposed to being able to put it back into the economy.

I would say those three major issues and the Joint Economic Committee report also documented that this bill will help the economy get more consumer spending and consumer confidence and consumer spending is an important part of the recovery.

Q I wanted to ask about this gun provision here. You see in the Congress there's been little movement on the assault weapons ban -- (inaudible) --

REP. MALONEY: I am surprised. I feel that it's unfortunate that a major consumer protection bill has a gun provision that is, in my opinion, dangerous and one that is totally unrelated to the substance of the bill. But I do believe the bill is so important to the economy, to consumers, and I would say even to issuers that we should have this reform go forward.

We tried with the debate and with a vote to remove it. We were not successful. We will keep trying.

I want to also underscore and my good friend and colleague, Carolyn McCarthy, had a conflict and could not be here. She's been a great leader on trying to get this amendment off of the bill, but at least I support and Carolyn McCarthy supports the right to own a gun, to hunt and so forth, but assault weapons -- these assault weapons and major weapons don't belong in parks. This is tranquil. This is a place for peace.

Guns can go into parks if you check them or if they're not loaded, but this was a provision that was actually put into law by former President Ronald Reagan and we are reversing it today with this vote regrettably.

Q (Off mike.)

REP. MALONEY: Well, Carolyn McCarthy has been the undisputed leader on guns, violence and gun control and I believe she has a series of other initiatives that she'll be working on, but I learned a long time ago to let other members talk about their programs and their policies. But she is very determined to continue working to make our streets, our schools safer. As many people say, what's next? Guns in churches and synagogues? Guns in stores? What's the next step that you take in bringing guns into public places?

Q (Off mike.)

REP. MALONEY: Sure.

REP. ELLISON: I just want to say I hope that the great victory for consumers is not lost here by this unfortunate provision. Let's keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing is that consumers today will be able to use that credit card in a way that does not put them a little step closer to bankruptcy. That's the main idea here. We have a fairer system of finance in our country today because of this and the gun thing is really a minor distraction in my view.

REP. MALONEY: I would say a major principle of the bill is to give consumers more control over their own credit, on setting their credit limits, on making decisions whether they want to go forward with an interest rate increase, on stopping tricks and traps and changing due dates and changing terms and I would like to say also that credit cards are a very important part of our economy. We all have credit cards. We all use credit cards. Many issuers have voluntarily implemented some of the main pieces of this -- that of giving notice of 45 days before going forward with any interest rate increases so that consumers can make a decision whether or not they want to go forward with the rate increase or pay off and go to another card.

Are there any other questions?

Q (Off mike.)

REP. MALONEY: The president made it very clear that he wants the bill on his desk by Memorial Day. A majority of us, 361 members of Congress in a bipartisan way have voted to get that bill to his desk. We had a fair debate on the gun provision, and regrettably, we were not able to remove the unrelated and dangerous amendment.

Anybody else?

I want to thank all of you -- it's been a long, hard battle. I feel this is an important bill. It will help our economy, help consumers, and I believe, help issuers, too. And I want to invite my colleagues to come up.

REP. JONES: I'm just going to make one brief comment. I think, truthfully, that one time during a hearing, I asked Dr. Pandit with Citigroup, why in this economy couldn't a bank on their own decide that instead of charging 20 or 21 percent, why not do your customers or the consumers a favor and lower that to 12 percent and help out the economy? They did not do it. They would not do it.

And so today, I think, my colleagues have said it right. This other issue today -- put it on the backburner and let's celebrate this victory by this lady who had people to help her, but this lady, let's celebrate this victory for the consumer and let the other issues take care of itself and it will one way or the other.

Thank you.

REP. MALONEY: Thank you for your help. Dan, get the last word.

REP. MAFFEI: I do think that Carolyn Maloney's leadership and the leadership of the committee has been tremendous here, bipartisan leadership as evidenced by Mr. Jones, but you know, I will say something about my class, the new class coming in, both Republicans and Democrats who were recently elected, most of us in districts where we had closer races than in others and we've been hearing about this since our campaigns. So I think that was one of the reasons why we did have such a broad bipartisan vote today and, you know, the fact that we have this other piece of -- I agree with Ms. Maloney that it was not related, I differ a bit about the merits, but it just proves all the more how solid the support was for the credit card holders bill of rights and how the democracy really works. People are upset for a good reason contacted their lawmakers. It didn't come from any of us originally. It came from Carolyn looking at her constituents and seeing what they had to put up with and that's how we got this legislation.

So, thank you very much again.

REP. ELLISON: I just want to thank you again, Carolyn. I don't have much more to add.

I will say that I hope we focus on the success of the bill today.

REP. MALONEY: Thank you so much, and thank you for being here and covering this important issue, really. Thank you. To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd see the day either. It was a long, hard fight, but today we got the bill passed and we're moving it to the president's desk.

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