Gutierrez Urges No Delay on Credit Card Reforms He Delayed

Toward the end of Thursday’s House debate on credit card reform — legislation that passed with broad bipartisan support — Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) took to the floor to attack a Republican attempt to delay the vote until a drawn-out study could be performed.

“We should not delay one day more the suffering of the American consumers at the hands of deceptive practices of the credit card industry,” Gutierrez said.

This is a weird thing for Gutierrez to say because the original bill would have put the new consumer protections into place 90 days after the bill passed — and then Gutierrez, as chairman of the House Financial Services subpanel on consumer credit, pushed that timeline from three months to 12. Good of him to draw the line of what constitutes an acceptable delay at 275 days and not 276.