奥巴马每日发言Enough is Enough(2009-5-14)

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REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN RIO RANCHO TOWN HALL
ON CREDIT CARD REFORM

Rio Rancho High School
Rio Rancho, New Mexico

10:30 A.M. MDT
 

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you so much.  What a wonderful welcome.  It's good to be back in New Mexico.  (Applause.)  It's always nice to get out of Washington for a while -- (applause) -- and come to places like Rio Rancho.  (Applause.)  The climate is nice, the conversation is nice, people are nice.  It is just wonderful to be here.

We've got a few special guests that I want to acknowledge here.  First of all, a great friend, one of the finest governors in the country -- please give it up for Bill Richardson.  (Applause.)  Lieutenant Governor, Diane Denish.  (Applause.)  Secretary of State, Mary Herrera.  (Applause.)  State Treasurer, James Lewis.  (Applause.)  State Auditor Hector Balderas.  (Applause.)

We've also got Joe Garcia, President of the National Congress of American Indians.  (Applause.)  Got Rio Rancho Mayor, Tom Swisstack.  (Applause.)  We've got some members of Congress who couldn't be here today, but I just want to acknowledge them because they're doing a great job.  Senator Tom Udall -- (applause) -- Senator Jeff Bingaman -- (applause) -- and Representative Ben Luján.  (Applause.)

And I want to thank Chris for the wonderful introduction and for her wonderful family who are here.  Please give her a big round of applause.  (Applause.)

Now, the last time I came here was 10 days before the election.  (Applause.)  We were over at the University of New Mexico.  (Applause.)  Tens of thousands of you showed up, it was a gorgeous night, stars were out.  And I told you then that if we wanted to steer ourselves out of our economic crisis, if we wanted to bring about the change we needed, then I needed your help.  I needed you to show up one more time.

And, New Mexico, you delivered.  (Applause.)

Q    We love you!

THE PRESIDENT:  I love you back.  (Applause.)  You delivered because you believed that after an era of selfishness and greed, we could reclaim a sense of responsibility from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.  You believed that in a time of great inequality, we could restore a sense of fairness to our economy.  You believed that rather than go back to the pursuit of short-term profits and a bubble-and-bust economy that led us to this point, we could build an economy based on sound ideas and solid investments, hard work, in order to secure a long-term prosperity.

So, New Mexico, I've come back today to tell you that's exactly what we've begun to do.  (Applause.)  Since the very first day that I took office, we have acted boldly and swiftly across all fronts to clear away the wreckage of this painful recession and to start laying a new foundation for prosperity.

We passed the most ambitious economic recovery plan in our nation's history to jumpstart job creation -- (applause) -- and get our economy moving again -- a plan that has kept teachers in the classroom and class sizes from increasing; a plan that will save or create 22,000 jobs just in New Mexico, mostly in the private sector; a plan that made good on the middle-class tax cut that we promised -- (applause) -- a tax cut that's already begun to appear in  paychecks for 700,000 working families across New Mexico.  (Applause.)

We made historic investments in the kind of clean energy that's led to an influx of cutting-edge companies creating new jobs and new opportunities right here in this state.

We've made productive strides towards fixing the health care crisis that I know has hit especially hard here -– strides towards reform that brings down costs; that give Americans the freedom to keep their doctor or plan that they already have, and choose a new doctor and a new plan if they want to; that finally gives every American access to quality, affordable health care.  (Applause.)

And already we've got millions of children across the country that have health care right now under the children's health care bill that we signed since I've taken office.  (Applause.)  So I believe we're moving in the right direction.  Step by step, we're making progress.  Now, we've got a long way to go before we can put this recession behind us.  And New Mexico is doing better than many states.  But it's tough out there.  But we do know that the gears of our economy, the economic engine, are slowly beginning to turn.

In the meantime, though, I know that there are so many Americans who are hurting right now.  You got hundreds of thousands who've lost their jobs just last month.  Millions are working jobs that don't pay enough to cover the bills.  Millions more see increasing portions of their income going towards paying down debt.  They're Americans struggling to cope with the rising cost of putting things like their mortgage, their tuition, their medical bills -- even their food and gas bills -- on their credit cards, because they feel like they're going underwater.  But they're quickly finding out that they can't dig their way out of debt because of unfair practices.  And that's what I want to talk about today briefly.

We're talking about folks like Chris Lardner.  She and her husband work hard; they're doing well.  They have a wonderful small business.  But she wrote to me last week and you just heard her story.  Her husband's business is in Albuquerque; two of their children are in college.  When one tuition payment that was mistakenly charged to a credit card put her over the limit, her credit card company more than tripled her rate to nearly 30 percent.  And she made a simple point in the letter that she wrote to me.  She said:  "If we conducted business this way, we'd have no business," she wrote.  "And if this is happening to us, I can only imagine what's going on in homes less fortunate than ours."

You all know what Chris is talking about.  I know.  I remember.  It hasn't been that long since I had my credit card, sometimes working that a little bit.  (Laughter.)  We're lured in by ads and mailings that hook us with the promise of low rates while keeping the right to raise those rates at any time for any reason -- even on old purchases; even when you make a late payment on a different card.  Right now credit card companies charge more than $15 billion a year in penalty fees.  One in five Americans carry a balance that has been charged interest rates above 20 percent.  Sometimes they even raise rates on outstanding balances even when you've paid your bills on time.

Now, I understand that many Americans are defaulting on their debt, and that's why these companies claim the need to raise rates.  One of the causes of this economic crisis was that too many people were living beyond their means with mortgages they couldn't afford, buying things they couldn't pay for, maxing out on credit cards that they couldn't pay down.  And in the last decade, Americans' credit card debt has increased by 25 percent. Nearly half of all Americans carry a balance on their cards, and those who do have an average balance over $7,000.

So we have been complicit in these problems.  We've contributed to our own problems.  We've got to change how we operate.  But these practices, they've only grown worse in the midst of this recession, when hardworking Americans can afford them least.  Now fees silently appear.  Payment deadlines suddenly move.  Millions of cardholders have seen their interest rates jump in the past six months.

You should not have to worry that when you sign up for a credit card, you're signing away all your rights.  You shouldn't need a magnifying glass or a law degree to read the fine print that sometimes don't even appear to be written in English -- or Spanish.  (Applause.)  And frankly, when you're trying to navigate your way through this economy, you shouldn't feel like you're getting ripped off by "any time, any reason" rate hikes, and payment deadlines that seem to move around every month.  That happen to anybody?  You think you're supposed to pay it this day, and suddenly -- and it's never on the end of the month where you're paying all the rest of your bills, right?  It's like on the 19th.  (Laughter.)  All kinds of harsh penalties and fees that you never knew about.

Enough is enough.  It's time for strong, reliable protections for our consumers.  It's time for reform -- (applause) -- it's time for reform that's built on transparency and accountability and mutual responsibility -- values fundamental to the new foundation we seek to build for our economy.

Now, this is not an issue I just discovered recently.  For years, I've been a proponent of strengthening consumer protections when it came to credit cards.  As a senator, I fought predatory lending and credit card abuse.  And I called for what I called a Credit Card Bill of Rights.  Last month, I met with the leaders of the major credit card companies to discuss these and other reforms that I believe will better protect the nearly 80 percent of American households that use credit cards.

And we didn't agree on anything -- everything as you might expect.  (Laughter.)  That was a slip of the tongue here.  (Laughter.)  We didn't agree on everything -- (laughter) -- but we did agree that any reforms we can shouldn't diminish consumers' access to credit.  I also think there's no doubt that people need to accept, as I said before, responsibility that comes with holding a credit card.  This is not free money.  It's debt.  And you shouldn't take on more than you can handle.  We expect consumers to make sound choices and live within their means and pay what they owe in a timely manner.

Banks are a business, too, and so they have a right to insist that timely payments are made.  But what we also expect is that our institutions act with the same sense of responsibility that the American people aspire to in their own lives.  We expect that when we enter into an agreement, that agreement is reasonable and transparent.  We expect to pay what's fair, not just what fattens growing profits for some credit card company.  This is America, and we don't begrudge a company's success when that success is based on honest dealings with consumers.  But some of these dealings are not honest.  (Applause.)  That's why we need reform.