April 7,2009
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News: Sen. Carl Levin (MI) Speaks Out on CC Reform.
Many congressmen are becoming vocal concerning credit card reform lately. Passion is developing over Senator Dodd's reform bill called "Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act" ("Dodd's Credit-Card Bill Inches up Capital Hill ").
One of them is Senator Carl Levin (MI). As Senator Levin expresses, these are the worst times to be pouncing on American consumers with unfair and abusive credit card practices by the industry. This is not the reason why we bailed all those credit card lending banks out of destruction.
Sen. Levine is chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. They have been investigating complaints from thousands of irate credit card holders covering the whole country. What they have found is that these practices have mired thousands of American families into deep debt. His constituents across Michigan have flooded him with their horror stories and the damage that has been done due to these unacceptable abuses by the credit card industry. On and on they go. Good and responsible residents who have done nothing wrong being crushed. The worst part of it is that the lenders are able to do this much damage and still be within the law.
So he has joined forces with the Chairman of the Senate Banking committee, headed by Senator Dodd. Dodd is pushing his tough bill through Congress right now but is catching a lot of flack from the Republican Party. The new legislation is designed to establish safeguards to protect credit card consumers from these abuses of unfair card companies. The hope is to put into law a block on these offenders from profiting from unfair practices.
The Banking committee has already approved the credit card legislation and is now putting it forth before Congress to pass it as soon as possible. Some of the opposition is relenting with the reasoning that it's unnecessary because mandates have already been established by the Treasury Dept. The Senator believes that more needs to be done because, in addition to those measures being too weak, the enforcement won't even take effect till mid-2010.