credit card reform

Two separate votes. Two high-profile legislative reforms, wrapped together, are on their way to the White House for a signature.
The first installs sweeping consumer protections for credit card users, including a prohibition on rate hikes for existing balances (unless payments are more than 60 days late) and a minimum 45-day warning when rate hikes are [...]

As Congress moves to reform punitive fees and penalties levied on cardholders who miss payments or exceed their credit limits, credit card issuers are threatening to charge new fees for customers who don’t carry balances each month and pay their bills on time, The New York Times reports.
Banks are expected to look at reviving annual [...]

A proposal allowing guns in national parks.
That’s right. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pushing a provision to overturn the Obama administration’s dismissal of a controversial Bush administration rule allowing concealed weapons in national parks and refuges.

We all know how this battle has played out in the past. Indeed, though the House easily passed a credit card reform bill in 2008 and again this year, Senate Democrats didn’t move their version anywhere last year, and it barely got out of the Banking Committee in March.
Things could be different this time around. [...]

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 [...]

To the surprise of no one, the House approved sweeping reforms to the credit card industry Thursday, including provisions banning retroactive rate increases, warning card owners 45 days in advance of rate increases and giving consumers more time to pay their bills.
The vote was 357 to 70. Several consumer-friendly amendments were added during floor debate, [...]

So said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who told reporters today that he’ll bring the bill to the floor without knowing if the Democrats have the votes to pass it. “We’ll see,” he said, according to reports.
The strategy could backfire. Senate leaders are set this afternoon to take up another proposal despised by the [...]

A group of liberal House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled legislation that would cap credit card rates at 18 percent. This should not to be confused with the push to freeze rates on existing balances, which made headlines last week — the Democrats’ cap would apply to future transactions as well.

It’s been partly necessitated by the fact that the lawmakers themselves delayed the effective date of their bill that would do the same thing.
That is, both Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) are sponsors of legislation that would prevent the same retroactive rate hikes they’re asking the Fed to stop; both sit on [...]

As we’ve had beaten into our heads, President Obama met with executives from the largest credit card companies this afternoon, urging cooperation on a number of consumer-friendly reforms that Democrats hope to enact this year (even if they don’t go into effect for 14 months more).
The White House just shot out the list of principles [...]