|
Credit unions post a win in Congress
By Jan
Lindsey • Bankrate.com
The U.S. House of Representatives
delivered a resounding win April 1 to Americans who belong to federal
credit unions. The house passed a bill that allows credit unions
to expand while retaining their current members.
"It passed 411-8,'' exclaimed Cherie
Hymbel, a spokeswoman for the National Credit Union Administration,
the body that charters, regulates and insures federal credit unions.
The vote came one day before the
Senate banking committee holds the last part of a two-part hearing
on credit union membership.
Bankers got virtually none of the
compromises they sought as H.R. 1151, the Credit Union Membership
Access Act, was being prepared in committee. Bankers want to see
federal credit unions taxed and, in general, treated like banks
if the credit unions expand beyond a certain size.
Bankers
will fight in the Senate
"We'll do what we can to get a more balanced bill in the Senate,''
American Bankers Association spokeswoman Charlotte Birch said after
the April 1 vote.
Karen Batra, manager of the public
affairs office in the Washington office of the Credit Union National
Association, said that might be difficult. "With unanimous support
in the House banking committee and overwhelming support in the House
... you can't expect the Senate to have a lot of opposition."
The credit union bill was attached
to financial modernization legislation, H.R. 10, until late March
31. Both bills were controversial, but the credit union bill enjoyed
support from congressmen, and backers of the modernization bill
hoped it would be pulled through on the coattails of the credit
union measure, Batra said.
Supreme
Court ruling prompted interest
But when arguments erupted March 31 over the modernization bill
during debate on the House floor, both bills were withdrawn. The
credit union bill was severed and presented for a vote the next
day.
Interest in the credit union bill
grew after the Supreme Court ruled in February that the credit union
administration had violated the Federal Credit Union Act when,
in the early 1980s, it began allowing federal credit unions to sign
up members who did not belong to their charter groups. Bankers
had claimed that the practice gave credit unions an unfair advantage.
-- Posted: April 1, 1998
|
