Paul and Udall Push Bipartisan Credit Union Business Lending Regulatory Reform
by JOHN BERLAU
Today, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) is launching its “Don’t Tax Tuesday” in which credit unions and their supporters tweet members of Congress about not double taxing credit union members in the name of “tax reform.” Another group, the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU), is holding a “Congressional Caucus” this week in which leaders and members of credit unions meet with lawmakers about the impact of current and proposed taxes and regulations.
Much of credit union’s big government burden is the same as that as faced by banks through the 2,500 pages of the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” rammed through in 2010 and the unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it created. Credit Unions have been vocal on how these regulations aimed at targeting Wall Street have been hitting Main Street.
At the NAFCU conference on Monday, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C) praised the group as being the only trade association to come out unambiguously against the creation of the CFPB during the Dodd-Frank debate. See my earlier Open Market post for some of the many specific credit union complaints against other parts of Dodd-Frank, such as the Durbin Amendment price controls on what banks and credit unions can charge retailers for debit card interchange processing fees.
Yet credit unions also face current and potential burdens from the efforts of the bank lobby trying to squelch competition through the use of big government. Take lending to business, for example.
Small businesses and start-ups pursue many diverse sources of funding. As traditional sources have dried up, credit unions have stepped in to fill the void. As Rohit Arora, CEO of the Biz2Credit small business loan arranging service, explained at FoxBusiness.com, “Following the mortgage bust, many big banks essentially turned off the spigot to small business lending. Credit unions decided to take advantage of this hole in the marketplace by increasing their small business loan-making.”
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