OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Credit Card Technical Corrections Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

Date: Oct. 13, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Business and Consumers Finance and Banking

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) and my colleague. I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lee) and Mr. Skelton.

You know, Mr. Speaker, one of the things the American people have a right to expect of us in Congress is that when we pass legislation, we step back after its passage and listen to the people affected by it to see if there are some mistakes that we made that need correction, and in this case, there is a mistake. Mr. Lee just outlined what it is and the chairman did the same.

I think a number of us, including Mr. Skelton, when we were home, heard from our credit card companies as to the over-inclusive nature of the legislation that would adversely affect the good work that they're doing. The CARD Act, as you know, had a number of very good provisions, including the 21-day notice requirement. That's intended to make sure that financial institutions give individuals enough time to pay a bill, and it established a minimum level of fairness. But for credit unions and their members, this change would actually have made things more difficult.

Credit unions use consolidated statements, so home loans, auto loans, savings accounts, checking accounts, and credit card bills are all in one package, and that's for the convenience of the consumer, not to create confusion for the consumer. This is the model, in fact, of how the system should work. It's straightforward and transparent.

The 21-day notice requirement would have had an unintended impact of requiring credit unions to split up those consolidated statements and transform transparency into confusion. This wouldn't help consumers and, obviously, wouldn't add to transparency. So the bill that has the support of Mr. Skelton and Mr. Lee and myself would clarify the intention of the CARD Act and allow credit unions to continue the very commonsense and, I think, consumer-friendly approach of sending their customers a single statement every month.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT


Source
arrow_upward