Return of the Cardholders Rights Bill
Mar 30th, 2009 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Politics & PolicyDo you remember the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights? That piece of legislation, co-authored by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), was supposed to ride herd on credit card issuers and their sometimes nightmarish practices, such as arbitrarily altering contract terms, retroactive billing and seemingly deliberate obfuscation of required disclosures. It’s champions in the House did so much jumping up and down when it pass that chamber that we forgot about the Senate. In fact, many of us thought it was now the law of the land.
But it’s not — at least, not yet. Congresswoman Maloney, bloodied but unbowed, reintroduced the bill (H.R. 627) almost as soon as she had been sworn back in last January. She has also secured a valuable ally in the person of the noisy but affable senior senator from New York. Senator Charlie Schumer has already introduced companion legislation in the Senate (S. 235), presumably in the hope that this time the measure doesn’t have to die of old age in the Senate Banking Committee pending tray. It still might, because Banking Committee Chairman Kit Dodd has his own version, scheduled for markup this week. No matter whose bill wends it way through the process, microbusiness owners and their advocates should take heed. What lawmakers decide to do with, to or about credit cards will matter far more to micros than the sum of everything they do about loans.
