[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 65 (Thursday, April 30, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H5048-H5052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            PROGRESSIVE MESSAGE FROM THE PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, I am here tonight representing the 
Progressive Caucus with the progressive message. I am hoping I can get 
the assistance of some of our very able pages who are seated in the 
back to grab my boards and my setup materials to help me along the way 
tonight.
  But the main idea is that the Progressive Caucus offers a progressive 
message, Madam Speaker, every single week, and this week, tonight, we 
are very, very pleased to be able to talk to the American people about 
the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights.
  Everybody knows for the last several years that our economy has not 
had equal and open access to everybody. American people are struggling 
hard, with flat wages on average for the last number of several years, 
and we have seen people's pay remain flat as other costs increase, such 
as health care costs, higher premiums, higher copays. We have seen 
these kind of things the American worker has been suffering with, and 
it has been tough out there for everybody. And what happened with the 
collection of higher costs and higher expenditures and flat pay is that 
Americans began to rely more and more on debt to meet their basic 
expenses.
  We are not talking about living extravagantly. We are talking about 
the basics. We are talking about a home that you can live in, raise 
your family in. We are talking about trying to move into a decent 
school district. We are talking about trying to have a house that is 
large enough for your family to live in, things like that.
  So at this point we are here tonight to talk about a triumph that the 
American people have had tonight with the passage of the American 
Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. So let me just get started.
  I want to thank our pages. We can't do anything without them. They 
are very sharp, able young people. I would recommend to any young 
person that they look into becoming a page. I want to thank them.
  But I want to start off by talking about tonight, and this is our 
progressive message and this is what we do every week as we bring a 
progressive vision to the American people, the progressive message, 
that is what I am talking about tonight, and this is on behalf of the 
Progressive Caucus. For people who are interested, we urge you to check 
out our e-mail address. Send us some information. We want to hear from 
you, the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
  So, again, tonight we want to talk about the importance of subprime 
lending, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, debt in the American 
economy. Americans are having flat wages, increasing costs of all 
kinds, and people needed somewhere to go. Where did they go? They went 
to debt. They went to credit card companies. They went into the equity 
in their homes, as they would take out home equity loans or refinances, 
things like that.
  What did people do to make the ends meet as they needed to make 
purchases they simply couldn't afford because of the flat wages that 
they suffered through? They did other things, like sometimes go to 
payday lenders, and even sometimes had to resort to other sorts of 
means.
  But what ended up happening is that, as Americans began to rely more 
on debt, they began to experience negative savings rates. Negative 
savings rates. What does this mean? This means that if you get paid 
every 2 weeks, on the second week, sometime around Wednesday or 
Thursday, you have more week left but you have no more paycheck left. 
That is what that meant. And that meant that you had to do something. 
Cutting back is what people did. Of course they cut back. But when you 
have food to pay for, mortgages to pay, things like that, you have got 
to do something, and people relied on debt.
  In 2005 and 2006, we had a negative 1.5 percent savings rate, a 
negative 2 percent. I remember when I first got elected in 2006 asking 
one of our more conservative testifiers at a committee hearing what he 
thought about our negative savings rate in America. He said, ``Don't 
worry about negative savings rates. We have got to recalculate what we 
mean by savings. Equity in your home, for example, is savings.'' Well, 
we now know, looking back from 2009, what that meant.
  But I want you to know that even though the American people have 
suffered through these financial difficulties, even though we had to 
rely on debt, the American people made a decision that was in their 
best interests and decided, you know, we don't have good policy for our 
country. We need better financial policy that is more responsive to the 
needs of consumers. We need better fiscal policy that really invests in 
our infrastructure, puts money into people's pockets, increases jobs

[[Page H5049]]

and spurs demand. And this Congress and the 110th Congress, starting in 
the 110th Congress and in the 111th Congress, has done this.
  Now, I don't like partisan politics, but I do believe in the truth, 
and I just want to point out that these difficulties that the American 
public has been going through, going into debt, taking on loan products 
that are difficult to afford, the American public really didn't want to 
get into this. But look how things changed, given the changing 
political reality.
  This chart entitled ``Subprime Lending,'' Republicans controlled 
Congress during all this period, 1996 right up to 2005. All this area, 
Republicans are in control of Congress. But in the shaded area, they 
are in control of the White House, too. Also on this chart you see 
subprime mortgages starting at $100,000 up to $700,000, and you see 
time on the bottom axis. And what is this line doing? It is going up.
  You see during Republican control, when we had no regulation, when we 
had a nonresponsive Congress, when we had a Congress not listening to 
the American people, you saw subprime mortgages go up. But we began to 
fix this. We began to work on this. We began to act quickly. And today 
is an example of what I am talking about, the Credit Cardholders' Bill 
of Rights, which I hope to talk about in a moment.
  But during these years when the Republicans had both the White House 
and the Congress, this shaded portion, what happened to subprime loans? 
They just kept going through the roof. As a matter of fact, since the 
Democrats got in control, we have begun to see a lot of action. But 
during the Republican-controlled period that I mentioned, 1995 to 2006, 
the Republicans, when they had the White House and the Congress, put 
out zero, passed zero in the area of financial regulation. The 
Republican scorecard, GSE, that means government sponsored enterprise, 
and subprime legislation, nothing. They did nothing.
  Now, people don't like this sometimes because it is like, well, you 
are being partisan. I am not trying to be partisan, I am just trying to 
be honest. But what has happened recently, starting in 2006? What took 
place then?
  Well, Democrats have passed bill after bill addressing the financial 
difficulties Americans are facing. Democrats today passed a Credit 
Cardholders' Bill of Rights. But this bill was passed in 2007 once the 
Democrats got ahold of the Congress. This bill we passed today is the 
second time we passed it. We are hoping that the other body, the folks 
down the hall, will pass a bill that matches up with it so the 
President can sign it. The President has made it clear he wants to sign 
a bill to help consumers with credit cards. But today we passed a bill 
again.

  I want to talk to folks about what some of the basic issues were and 
what some of the basic features of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of 
Rights we passed today are, keeping in mind the fact that the 
Republicans didn't pass anything when they had the White House and the 
Congress and during their tenure subprime loans were just going through 
the roof.
  Here is what happened when you got Democrats in here. The Credit 
Cardholders' Bill of Rights ends unfair arbitrary interest rate 
increases. This legislation prevents credit card companies from 
unfairly increasing interest rates on existing card balances. 
Retroactive increases are permitted only if a cardholder is more than 
30 days late, if a promotional rate expires, if the rate adjusts as 
part of a variable rate, or if the cardholder fails to comply with a 
workout agreement.
  This legislation, which ends unfair and arbitrary rate increases, is 
good for the American consumer. This legislation lets consumers set 
hard credit limits and stops excessive over-the-limit fees. This bill 
does that by the following way: It requires companies to let consumers 
set their own fixed credit limit that cannot be exceeded.
  So people think, well, look, you know, if I have a $500 limit on this 
card, I don't want to spend more than that. This is my way of 
controlling my spending. Well, what some credit card companies do is 
let you still spend that $501, but then they charge you $35 for the 
privilege, ``privilege'' in quotes, that is. You didn't want that. That 
is not what you paid for. Now you can say $500, that is it.
  This bill lets consumers set hard limits and stop over-the-limit fees 
by preventing companies from charging over-the-limit fees when the 
cardholder has set a limit or when the preauthorized credit hold pushes 
the consumer over the limit.
  What will happen? The credit charge is denied and you just can't buy 
that purchase. But maybe consumers want that so they can control their 
spending, or if they let their child use the card, they want to do 
that. So now consumers will be able to do this, if we can get this 
through the Senate and the President signs it.
  This bill ends unfair penalties for cardholders who pay on time. It 
ends the unfair practice known as double-cycle billing. What is this? 
What is double-cycle billing? It is when card companies want to charge 
interest on a debt consumers have already paid on time. So let's say 
you paid your debt on time, but what they want to do is charge you 
interest on that debt that you paid on time. Is that fair? No. If a 
cardholder pays a bill on time in full, this bill that we passed today 
prevents card companies from piling additional fees on balances 
consisting only of leftover interest. And this bill prohibits card 
companies from charging a fee when customers pay their bill.
  So there is this thing the credit card companies have called ``pay to 
pay.'' Not pay to play, but pay to pay, meaning if you want to pay, you 
got to pay in order to pay. That doesn't seem like it makes much sense. 
If you are paying your bill, they ought to take the money for the bill 
you paid.
  This Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights which we just passed, which 
addresses the credit card situation that people are facing, requires a 
fair allocation of consumer payments. This is an important thing, 
because it is through this clever little practice that a lot of 
Americans see their pockets get holes in them and their money run out.
  What this means is many companies credit payments to a cardholder's 
lowest interest rate balances first.

                              {time}  1645

  Now, why does that matter? Because if you incur a debt, and part of 
that debt you're paying 10 percent on, and then you make another 
charge, and now the interest rate has increased and you're paying 20 
percent on that other part of the debt, so now you've got two charges, 
one for 110 percent, another for 120 percent. They won't let you pay 
off the higher interest rate amount first. They pay off the lower 
interest amount first. Why? Because the higher interest rate for the 
longer period of time gets them more money, loses you more money.
  So, companies credit payments to a cardholder's lowest interest rate 
balances first, regardless of when you incurred the debt, making it 
impossible for a consumer to pay off the higher rate debt. The bill 
bans this practice. This bill we passed today bans this and requiring 
payments made in excess of the minimum to be allocated proportionally 
to the balance with the highest interest rate. So now you can get out 
of debt.
  Now, if you charge something on your credit card, you're not able to 
pay it off at the end of the month, you don't end up drowning in a sea 
of debt. You can get out of this muck, out of the mire.
  The credit cardholders' bill of rights protects credit cardholders 
from due-date gimmicks. This bill requires credit card companies to 
mail billing statements 21 calendar days before the due date, and to 
credit as on time payments made before 5 p.m. on the day due. This 
makes a big difference because you might pay your bill on time, but 
they say, nope, you didn't pay on time. Why? Because we played some 
shenanigans with the due date.
  This bill extends the due date to the next business day for mailed 
payments when the due date falls on a day the card company does not 
accept or receive mail; that's Sunday and holidays. Very good for 
consumers.
  This bill prevents companies from using misleading terms and damaging 
consumer credit ratings. The bill establishes standard definitions for 
terms like ``fixed rate'' or ``prime rate'' so companies can't mislead 
or trick consumers by marketing and advertising. You know, the 9.9 
fixed rate, until it's

[[Page H5050]]

not fixed. And when is it not fixed? Well, when they say it's not 
fixed. It's fixed right up until it isn't fixed anymore. When is that? 
Whenever we say it is. This kind of practice is not fair and is going 
to be stopped by this bill.
  This bill protects vulnerable consumers from high-fee subprime credit 
cards. It prohibits issuers of subprime cards where the total yearly 
fixed fee exceeds 25 percent from charging those fees to the card 
itself. These cards are generally targeted to low-income consumers. So 
just think about it, somebody says come get a credit card. You're low-
income, and they say, there's going to be a fee for having this card. 
So you say, okay, well, whatever. I don't know because the fine print 
has me all confused and I don't really get it. I just think I'm going 
to get a credit card.
  So then what happens is you get the card. You sign on the dotted 
line; and before you even use the card for the first time, you find 
that there's already $400 worth of charges on the card. How could that 
be? You've never really used it before. Well, the fee that they're 
charging you has been already put on the card before you ever used it. 
So if you cancel the card, you still owe them. And the interest rate 
just keeps on climbing. This bill stops that.
  Now, I tell folks all the time that I knew that things were bad when 
my 19-year-old son, who wasn't working, kept getting credit card 
solicitations in the mail. And I thought that was a problem. But I knew 
we had a real problem when my 13-year-old son started getting credit 
card solicitations in the mail. Yes, if you're watching this broadcast, 
you may have seen a 13- or 12-year-old get a credit card solicitation. 
How does this happen?
  Well, because you sign up for Sports Illustrated or some magazine, 
your name gets on the list, and then they start doing it to you.
  Now, this bill says that it prohibits card companies from knowingly 
issuing cards to individuals under 18 who are not emancipated.
  Now, the fact is, these are the basics of this credit card bill, this 
credit cardholders' bill of rights. It's responsive government in 
action. It's responsive government in action.
  And I'm very proud to report that even though, when the Republicans 
were in charge of both the White House and Congress--I'm not happy to 
report this part--but even though they passed no legislation to protect 
consumers from subprime lending, and even though, during their tenure, 
which is from this period, 2001 and right up to the end of 2005, they 
controlled both the White House and Congress, they didn't pass 
anything. Subprime loans just went through the roof.
  Even though those two things are true, there's a lot of Republicans 
who did the right thing today, and I want to commend them. I can tell 
you that in the Financial Services Committee, we had nine Republicans 
vote for the credit cardholders' bill of rights. And today you only had 
70 Members of Congress who voted ``no.'' And therefore, you had over 
130-some Republicans voted for this bill. They are to be commended. 
They put the interests of their constituents over that of certain 
credit card companies, and they deserve the applause and my personal 
thanks.
  Let me say that it's time to rebuild our economy in a way that's 
consistent with our values, the economy that's built on a strong 
foundation, not financial schemes, overheated housing markets and 
maxed-out credit cards. We want to build an economy that offers 
prosperity in the long run, not just the short quarter.
  American families face the reality of this financial crisis every 
day. We think the lending industry has continuously found new ways to 
make profits out of old regulations and has faced little oversight and 
needs a reality check.
  As I say this, I want to commend that there are a number of good 
lenders out there, and credit cards are not bad in and of themselves. 
But there have been some bad practices. This credit cardholder's bill 
of rights allows for a basic floor, so that good credit card companies, 
watching bad credit card companies make a lot of money off those 
abusive practices, are not tempted to engage in those practices 
themselves. We're setting a floor. That's what it means to be a Member 
of Congress, to try to set a floor for our free market system to 
operate properly.
  During the reign of the Bush administration, Republicans presided 
over a systematic weakening of financial regulations. And along with 
this deregulation, we saw the dramatic rise in subprime loans and 
consumer credit without increasing consumer protections.
  I already mentioned this very troubling statistic, and I urge people 
to take a close look at it and examine it because it tells a very, very 
disturbing story. Some credit card companies, not all, have long 
engaged in deceptive practices that harm consumers, and real reform is 
long overdue, which is why we're so happy to have passed the credit 
cardholders' bill of rights today.
  With credit card debt in the United States reaching record heights, 
nearly a trillion, that's trillion, with a T, and almost half of all 
American families carry an average balance of about $7,300 in 2007, 
this bill could not come soon enough. This bill came right on time.
  In 2008, credit card issuers imposed $19 billion in penalty fees on 
families with credit cards. In fact, they weren't upset with you when 
you didn't pay off that balance every month. They were quite pleased 
because they could hit you with a big old fee and you would have to pay 
a lot of money, which, if you're relying on a credit card, you might 
not have readily available.

  This year, credit card companies will break all previous records for 
late fees, over-the-limit charges and other penalties, resulting in 
more than $20.5 billion. That's a lot of money. And this is just--I'm 
not talking about their profits. I'm talking about their profits 
generated from over-the-limit charges and penalties and fees; not all 
profits, just penalty-based profits.
  This legislation, which we passed today, the Credit Cardholders' Bill 
of Rights, would require companies to provided advanced notice of rate 
increases, while also placing restrictions on the ability of card 
companies to raise rates retroactively.
  This legislation, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, is a 
comprehensive credit card reform package that also incorporates a bill 
I authored called the Universal Default Prohibition Act of 1990. I was 
proud to introduce a bill that was a stand-alone bill that had been 
woven into this larger bill, prohibiting universal default provisions.
  Some people are lucky enough to not know what universal default is. 
But what universal default means is that if you have more than one 
credit card and if you default on one of them, you now get hit with 
late fees and increased penalties and interest rates on the ones you 
were on time for, because the credit card company can say you're now a 
higher risk because of the adverse action on the one card, and so they 
can hit you on the other cards.
  Now, a deal ought to be a deal. If you say, I'm going to pay this 
rate and I'm going to pay on time and on this card, and you don't mess 
up on that one, they shouldn't be able to get you because of some other 
problem. I mean, your mortgage doesn't go up because you don't pay your 
car note on time. I mean, the fact is, your gym fees don't go up 
because you didn't pay a library book, get a library book back on time.
  The reality is that this universal default practice is unfair to 
consumers, and there should not be any adverse action against you 
unless you default on the card that you defaulted on.
  So we're now happy that this provision was in the legislation and 
encourage consumers to rejoice because this important practice is in 
the bill. This important provision is in the bill.
  Currently, a credit card company can raise interest rates on a 
cardholder, even if he or she has never made a late payment to that 
particular company;

[[Page H5051]]

and that ain't right. This legislation bans most of the abusive 
practices, including universal default. I've worked hard to stop this 
harmful practice in part of my work on consumer justice. I'm proud to 
say that this landmark bill passed the House today. And even though 
last year the bill was not taken up by the Senate, we expect the Senate 
to take swift action, this Congress to enact crucial reforms to protect 
consumers.
  We have a President in the White House who's actually concerned about 
the rights of consumers. And this is a golden opportunity to bring true 
reform to the credit card industry.
  Again, this is not an anti-credit card bill. Credit cards help us. 
They help us rent cars, get hotel rooms, buy expenditures. This is not 
about being against credit cards. But it is about trying to stop some 
of the more abusive practices of some credit card companies that hurt 
American consumers when we can least afford to withstand some of these 
difficult practices.
  I want to talk about what some of my colleagues who oppose the bill 
had to say. Some of them were quite critical of the bill and didn't 
vote for it. You can hardly believe it. Yes, it's true. Seventy people 
did not vote for the bill. I guess that's their prerogative. I'm sure 
that their voters will learn about this.
  But my point is, I'd like to just talk a little bit about what some 
of their arguments were. One of the arguments was this: that if we stop 
these abusive practices, that it will dry up credit for everyone. This 
is not true. There are 10 big credit card companies, and over half of 
them don't do universal default. They're profitable. Other practices in 
the credit card industry are not done throughout the industry, but only 
certain companies do them.
  The fact is, that some of these things that have been banned, many of 
these practices banned in this bill or restricted in this bill have 
been identified by the Federal Reserve, under a lengthy study, as 
abusive and deceptive practices. And so, therefore, if they're abusive 
and deceptive, are some of the critics of the bill saying that we must 
let the consumer exist at the tender mercies of what are abusive 
practices or there will be no credit? That simply makes no sense.
  It's almost like saying that unless you allow a toaster that explodes 
every second or third time it's used, then nobody will be able to get a 
toaster because the price of making a safe toaster would make having a 
toaster for anyone too high. That's just silly, and we should never go 
for it.

                              {time}  1700

  We should always stand up against that.
  I want to say that, as for this bill, the bill that we passed today, 
I'm proud of this bill. I was honored to vote for it, and I would vote 
for it again.
  Let me just talk about a few folks from my district and what they 
said to me.
  Kristen from south Minneapolis writes: ``Dear Representative Ellison, 
I'm writing to you to ask you to support a strong version of the Credit 
Cardholders' Bill of Rights. This bill improves important provisions 
for protecting consumers. The main problem is that H.R. 627--'' that's 
the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights ``--won't be implemented quickly 
enough. We need protection from predatory credit card practices now. 
Predatory credit card practices drain hard-earned money from people 
like me who cannot afford these tricks and traps any longer. The credit 
card companies have been targeting me for no reason in the last 2 
months. I have a good job and a decent credit score. Recently, I saw my 
APR go up because the banks are under financial strain. These are the 
same banks that received billions of dollars in unregulated support 
from the U.S. taxpayers, and now they're taking it out on us.''
  Annette, also from Minneapolis--my town--writes: ``I'm very concerned 
about rising interest rates by credit card companies. I worry that this 
will turn out to be the same as banking and the housing crisis.''
  Mark from northeast Minneapolis writes: ``We are residents of 
northeast Minneapolis. Due to our self-discipline, we have a top-tier 
credit rating. We recently received notification from Capital One that 
our credit card annual percentage rate would increase from a 9.9 
percent fixed rate to a variable rate, which was 17.9 percent as of 
January 28, 2009. We find this action reprehensible. It is contrary to 
the needs of taxpayers in this economic climate. We ask that you 
sponsor legislation which limits and regulates usury practices for all 
financial institutions.''
  I just want to say to Mark from northeast Minneapolis: Did it today, 
Mark. Thank you. Thank you.
  Eugene from south Minneapolis writes: ``Would like credit card reform 
passed immediately. There should be limits set on interest rates in 
order to help consumers.''
  Mr. Stein writes that he has never been late on a payment, but 
Citibank just raised his rate by 5 percent while they were getting 
bailout money.
  John from Minneapolis wonders why his rates on his Capital One card 
are increasing so much recently: ``They're almost doubling. Please 
support legislation to stop this type of lending.''
  I'm just reading letters from my constituents. They're very concerned 
about this situation. They wanted somebody to do something about what 
they were going through in this tough economic climate.
  So I'm just going to wrap up by saying that we have worked hard. 
We've gotten a lot of Republican votes on this legislation today. It 
was a bipartisan bill. I want to commend Democrats and Republicans for 
passing this bipartisan bill, which was passed with only 70 ``noes'' 
and 357 ``yeas.'' That means it was bipartisan. That means that both 
sides saw that this was an important bill to pass.
  I want to say that I'm proud of groups like ACORN. Yes, I like ACORN. 
I'm proud of the AFL-CIO, Americans for Fairness in Lending, Capital 
Progress in Action, the Center for Responsibility, Consumer Action, 
Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Demos, Leadership 
Conference on Civil Rights, NAACP, National Association of Consumer 
Advocates, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, National Consumer 
Law, National Council of La Raza, National Small Business Association--
let me repeat that one--National Small Business Association, 
Opportunity Finance Network, Public Citizen, Sargent Shriver National 
Center on Poverty Law, Service Employees International, and U.S. Public 
Interest Research Group. They all wrote this really, really nice letter 
urging us to support this important legislation.
  These are civil rights groups, small business groups, labor unions--
people of all types--knowing full well that we've got to do something 
to rebalance the scales in this wonderful country of ours. That's why 
we have this Congress, so that Representatives can come here and say, 
We're going to set things right.
  Now I'm going to take a few more minutes before I wrap up to say that 
this bill that passed today, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, is 
really, simply, a bill that signals greater change. In the near future, 
we will be taking up another important consumer justice piece of 
legislation.
  This bill I'm referring to now is a bill that addresses this practice 
of predatory lending in the mortgage housing sector. This antipredatory 
lending bill, of which I am also a very proud author, is going to be up 
in a week from today, Madam Speaker. This bill, which we're going to 
get the chance to vote on in about a week, is a bill that is a long 
time in coming, and if we'd have passed a bill like this years ago, as 
advocates were urging us to do, we may not be in the situation we're in 
today.
  I want to say that this important bill is going to be up next 
Thursday. If people, Madam Speaker, want to weigh in on this bill, they 
should start doing so now if they have not already done so, because 
it's coming up soon. We want folks to know that Democrats and some 
Republicans care about the consumer; we are not going to back down from 
fighting for the consumer, and we are proud to be able to represent the 
American consumer.
  So, with that, Madam Speaker, I'm just going to say it's an honor to 
come before you and the folks watching.
  I just want to say, as we begin to wrap up, that the American 
consumer has been experiencing mounting debt. As we see the average 
household income, this is a flat line going straight across. Do you see 
that flat line? It's just going flat. There are a few dips and a few 
dives and a few blips upwards, but it's a flat line.

[[Page H5052]]

  What has not been flat? Nonrevolving credit card debt has been going 
down here all the way up here to the 110th. Revolving credit: also 
setting a trend upward. Home equity loans: going up. Mortgages: going 
up. The difference between this line and these up here explains why 
Americans have gotten in such difficult dire straits. Now is the time 
to start fixing it.
  We see two things happening that are very important for the American 
consumer. On the one hand, we see financial regulation. On the other 
hand, we see the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act put 
into our economy to reinvest in infrastructure, to invest in 
innovation, to invest in health care, to invest in a renewable economy 
so that we can actually increase demand, increase jobs, increase tax 
revenues, and get ourselves out of the deficit. We see ourselves 
plugging the holes that these credit card companies and other debt 
instruments have created for the American consumer.
  Help is not only on the way; help has arrived. You see responsible 
legislation coming forward so that the American consumer and the 
American economy can fly high, once again, as it has in the past. 
Consumer justice is what we need. Consumer justice is what we're 
getting.
  Madam Speaker, it has been an honor to come before you.

                          ____________________