A crisp clean graphic that defeats every claim by the GOP that the Recovery Act did’t create jobs.

The Senate version of the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights hits the Senate floor today and now is time to call your Senator to make sure that he/she knows that you support this bill.    If you care about the fact that Credit Card companies are taking taxpayer funded TARP money and then arbitrarily hiking up your interest rates regardless of your payment history but just because they can then today is the day to call your Senator and tell him/her to vote for this bill.   Credit card companies are gouging consumers in the name of the bad economy and its up to the consumers to do something about it.  Contact Your Senator .   See the details of the Senate version of the bill below.

Contact Your Senator

THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNTABILITY RESPONSIBILITY AND DISCLOSURE ACT

Prevents Unfair Increases in Interest Rates and Changes in Terms
• Prohibits arbitrary interest rate increases and universal default on existing balances;
• Requires a credit card issuer who increases a cardholder’s interest rate to periodically review and decrease the rate if indicated by the review;
• Prohibits credit card issuers from increasing rates on a cardholder in the first year after a credit card account is opened;
• Requires promotional rates to last at least 6 months.

Prohibits Exorbitant and Unnecessary Fees
• Prohibits issuers from charging a fee to pay a credit card debt, whether by mail, telephone, or electronic transfer, except for live services to make expedited payments;
• Prohibits issuers from charging over-limit fees unless the cardholder elects to allow the issuer to complete over-limit transactions;
• Requires penalty fees to be reasonable and proportional to the omission or violation;
• Enhances protections against excessive fees on low-credit, high-fee credit cards.

Requires Fairness in Application and Timing of Card Payments
• Requires payments in excess of the minimum to be applied first to the credit card balance with the highest rate of interest;
• Prohibits issuers from setting early morning deadlines for credit card payments;
• Requires credit card statements to be mailed 21 days before the bill is due rather than the current 14.

Protects the Rights of Financially Responsible Credit Card Users
• Prohibits interest charges on debt paid on time (double-cycle billing ban);
• Prohibits late fees if the card issuer delayed crediting the payment;
• Requires that payment at local branches be credited same-day.

Provides Enhanced Disclosures of Card Terms and Conditions
• Requires cardholders to be given 45 days notice of interest rate, fee and finance charge increases;
• Requires issuers to provide disclosures to consumers upon card renewal when the card terms have changed;
• Requires issuers to provide individual consumer account information and to disclose the period of time and total interest it will take to pay off the card balance if only minimum monthly payments are made;
• Requires full disclosure in billing statements of payment due dates and applicable late payment penalties.

Strengthens Oversight of Credit Card Industry Practices
• Requires each credit card issuer to post its credit card agreements on the Internet, and provide those agreements to the Federal Reserve Board to post on its website;
• Requires the Federal Reserve Board to review the consumer credit card market, including the terms of credit card agreements and the practices of credit card issuers and the cost and availability of credit to consumers.

Ensures Adequate Safeguards for Young People
• Requires issuers extending credit to young consumers under the age of 21 to obtain an application that contains: the signature of a parent, guardian, or other individual 21 years or older who will take responsibility for the debt; or proof that the applicant has an independent means of repaying any credit extended;
• Limits prescreened offers of credit to young consumers;
• Prohibits increases in the credit limit on accounts where a parent, legal guardian, spouse or other individual is jointly liable unless the individual who is jointly liable approves the increase in writing.Enhanced Penalties
• Increases existing penalties for companies that violate the Truth in Lending Act for credit card customers.

Gift Card Protections
• Protects recipients of gift cards by requiring all gift cards to have at least a five-year life span, and eliminates the practice of declining values and hidden fees for those cards not used within a reasonable period of time.

Encourages Transparency in Credit Card Pricing
• Requires the GAO to study the impact of interchange fees on consumers and merchants, specifically their disclosure, pricing, fee and cost structure.

Contact Your Senator

President Obama explained today how his administration will bring us out of this economic down turn and how he will pay for it through eliminating government waste and tax loopholes for the wealthy.  The President plans to reduce the deficit by fifty percent at the end of his first term.  See full comments below.

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON THE FISCAL YEAR 2010 BUDGET
Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Room 350
February 26, 2009

9:55 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Before I begin, I have some good news to report.  Starting today, the recently unemployed will benefit from a COBRA subsidy that will make health care affordable.  At a time when health care is too often too expensive for the unemployed, this critical step will help 7 million Americans who’ve lost their jobs keep their health care.  That’s 7 million Americans who will have one less thing to worry about when they go to sleep at night.  Equally important, it prevents a further downward spiral in our economy by ensuring that these families don’t fall further behind because of mounting health care bills.  And it is a direct result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that I signed into law the other week — a recovery plan that has only just begun to yield benefits for the American people. 

But while we must add to our deficits in the short term to provide immediate relief to families and get our economy moving, it is only by restoring fiscal discipline over the long run that we can produce sustained growth and shared prosperity.  And that is precisely the purpose of the budget I’m submitting to Congress today.

In keeping with my commitment to make our government more open and transparent, this budget is an honest accounting of where we are and where we intend to go.  For too long, our budget has not told the whole truth about how precious tax dollars are spent.  Large sums have been left off the books, including the true cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And that kind of dishonest accounting is not how you run your family budgets at home; it’s not how your government should run its budgets, either.  We need to be honest with ourselves about what costs are being racked up — because that’s how we’ll come to grips with the hard choices that lie ahead.  And there are some hard choices that lie ahead.

Just as a family has to make hard choices about where to spend and where to save, so do we, as a government.  You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation.  Today, we have to focus on foundations.  Having inherited a trillion-dollar deficit that will take a long time for us to close, we need to focus on what we need to move the economy forward, not on what’s nice to have.  That’s why, on Monday, I held a fiscal summit to come up with a plan to put us on a more sustainable path.  And that is why, as we develop a full budget that will come out this spring, we’re going to go through our books page by page, line by line, to eliminate waste and inefficiency.  This is a process that will take some time, but in the last 30 days alone, we have already identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions that will help us cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term.

For example, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack is saving nearly $20 million with reforms to modernize programs and streamline bureaucracy.  Interior Secretary Salazar will save nearly $200 million by stopping wasteful payments to clean up abandoned coal mines that just happen to have already been cleaned up.  Education Secretary Duncan is set to save tens of millions dollars more by cutting an ineffective mentoring program for students, a program whose mission is being carried out by 100 other programs in 13 other agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer has a message for GOP governors humming and hawing over whether that want to accept the funds from the Reinvestment and Recovery Act (stimulus).  Schumer, in a letter to Peter Orzag of the Office of Management and Budget, requests that that the governors of the states not be given the option to splice and dice the package because it would then diminish the stimulative effect of the package and its implementation.  Lousiana’s governor Jindal has indicated that he will accept some of the funds but will reject monies allocated for the unemployment trust fund (UTF).  Interesting position by Jindal considering that he accepted and advocated for the same federal funds allocated to the UTF for Katrina relief.  Not to mention that Lousiana has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country.  See Schumer’s letter to the Office of Management and Budget below.

Dear Director Orszag:

In recent days, a small minority of governors, mostly Republicans, have publicly weighed the possibility of foregoing certain emergency provisions provided under the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed last week by President Obama. I believe this prospect not only would undercut the stimulative effect of the recovery package, but also is inconsistent with a key provision included in the law passed by Congress. To protect the integrity of the recovery program, I urge the administration to issue implementation guidance clarifying that while any Governor may exercise his or her discretion to accept or reject the federal funds provided in the stimulus, no Governor should have the authority to arbitrarily adopt a select subset of the overall package.

As you know, Section 1607(a) of the economic recovery legislation provides that the Governor of each state must certify a request for stimulus funds before any money can flow. No language in this provision, however, permits the governor to selectively adopt some components of the bill while rejecting others. To allow such picking and choosing would, in effect, empower the governors with a line-item veto authority that President Obama himself did not possess at the time he signed the legislation. It would also undermine the overall success of the bill, as the components most singled out for criticism by these governors are among the most productive measures in terms of stimulating the economy.

For instance, at least two governors have proposed rejecting a program to expand unemployment insurance for laid-off workers. Economists consistently rank unemployment insurance among the most efficient and cost-effective fiscal stimulus measures; by one frequently cited estimate, it provides an economic return of as high as $1.73 for every dollar invested. Thus, by denying this provision for their residents, these governors are not just depriving some of the neediest Americans of relief in a dire economy; they are undermining the overall stimulative impact of the package.

No one would dispute that these governors should be given the choice as to whether to accept the funds or not. But it should not be multiple choice. The composition of the package was rightly dictated by economic considerations; we should not let the implementation of the package be dictated by political considerations.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer

United States Senator