Great News! Thanks to public support, HR 5244 passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now it goes to the U.S. Senate.

Since Congress is set to RECESS in 3 DAYS your Senators need to hear from you NOW.

Make sure they schedule this for a vote and pass it. There isn’t any U.S. consumer with a credit card who will not benefit from this bill becoming law.

Again, to make things easy, Credit Card Reform.Org has a web page from which you can e-mail a letter to your Senators.  

From their site:

“We think a deal should be a deal. And a big Wall Street bailout must include changes that will actually help ordinary Americans. This is one small but important step in that direction. 

If you have friends and family with credit cards, please forward this message on to them. Only a few days remain to get this bill passed before Congress adjourns for the year, and we need all the consumer voices we can get to counter the big banks and credit card companies, who want to keep their unfair advantages.”

When you think about what credit card companies do, it’s outrageous. You take out a loan at one rate, say 15%, and yet that rate can be raised to anything: 18%, 21%, 27%, 33%, with only 15 days notice and for no good reason except the borrower is “a bad risk.” 

Of course he’s a bad risk! How is he going to make ends meet when his debt is growing by 33% a year?

And, make no mistake, there are Americans whose credit card interest rates are above the thirtieth percentile!

They are, typically, the poorest among us. Yet how is it that those among us who are the poorest, and who have the least, tend to be charged the most for everything?

It’s just wrong.

POSTSCRIPT FOR YESTERDAY’S POST:

I’ve been thinking about Bert Ely’s comment about the mortgage melt-down problem being “an oversupply of housing” and I think that’s false.

If we have more houses than we need, then why have housing prices gone through the roof so no one can afford a mortgage?

It hasn’t been because there are “too many” houses.

On the contrary, since we live in a “supply and demand” economy, high housing costs would indicate that we do not have enough houses to meet the demand. Or not enough NICE houses to meet the increase in population. Because – as everyone knows – when the market is glutted with supply, the price goes down.

Certainly if Bert-o had ever stepped into some of the shacks that very poor Americans live in – remember the photos from Katrina and how so many were shocked at the poverty – he wouldn’t dare say that we have an “over supply” of housing.

Yet he’s a banking consultant, so what can we expect?

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It’s old news already that President Bush has announced an unprecedented bailout of private financial institutions¹. My husband smiled and said:

“Bear in mind that this is, supposedly, a ‘conservative’ president who believes in ‘free trade’ and ‘free market forces.’ In another time and place, the Republicans might be calling this bailout a brand of ‘socialism’ or the federal takeover of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae ‘communism.’ Yet he sees no inconsistency. He just calls it ’capitalism’.”

The fact is, President Bush and the GOP only like to let “market forces” rule when it’s the little guy’s family that goes on the skids, not the big boys on Wall Street.

Truth be told, no one will benefit from total financial collapse, least of all the poor and middle class. So something does need to be done.

Yet am I the only one who finds it ironic that the federal government is now going to take over all the bad debts of these financial empires?

No one takes over the unmanageable debts of the poor stiff who’s working two jobs, living from paycheck to paycheck and gets in over his head with credit card debt after his credit card company raises his rate at will.

Bottom line, President Bush and the GOP have always practiced corporate welfare – while trying to kill any program that might help working class families – so this is really nothing unexpected.

Also, don’t get me started on how many articles have been written blaming the poor stiffs who had the gall to want to own a home.

“FOR SHAME! How dare you try to buy a home on minimum wage? YOU should have known better. Now YOU are bringing down the whole economy, you worthless scum! The bankers are just poor victims.”

Sadly, from the blog posts I’ve seen a number of people really seem to believe that.

But I digress.

This post is supposed to be a follow-up to my post about urging Congress to pass HR 5244, otherwise known as the “Credit Card Bill Of Rights Act of 2008.” 

A mere 50,000 people sent e-mails to their representatives demanding that this bill be passed. (It should be fifty million.) Now congressional representatives need to get phone calls – today and all this week – to get this thing passed.

LAWMAKERS ARE HEARING FROM THE BANKS. They need to hear from you. TODAY.

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If you’ve never looked at a website that publishes information about legislation introduced to Congress, you might take a look at these links for HR 5244, House Resolution 5244, otherwise known as the “Credit Card Bill Of Rights Act of 2008″ from Gov Track.

If you have a credit card, you would be smart to call or write your Congressional representatives this Monday to demand that this bill be passed, and quickly.

The Summary Of The bill:

“To amend the Truth in Lending Act to establish fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open end consumer credit plan, and for other purposes.”

Where It Is In The Legislative Process:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-5244

Read The Official Text Of HR522:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-5244

Learn How How A Bill Becomes Law:

http://www.vote-smart.org/resource_govt101_02.php

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A Credit Card Bill of Rights (HR 5244) has been introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill is designed to stop the extreme credit card account re-pricing we’ve been seeing for several years in which interests rates are raised to high levels for no justifiable reason except that a credit card company and its shareholders want higher profits. 

Yet Congress is about to adjourn and will, likely, table the measure unless there is a public outcry from a large number of credit card account holders.

So send an e-message to your Congressional Representative right now by clicking on the link below! And pass on the message to everyone you know.

CLICK ON THE LINK

https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1949  [Read more →]