For immediate release:
Thursday, March 13, 2008

Contact: 
Lynda Tran, 202-907-1172

Statement by SEIU, Consumers Union, USPIRG, Consumer Federation of America, and Consumer Action on the Cancellation of Consumer Testimony at the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Hearing

This morning's cancellation of the panel presenting consumer testimony to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit is yet another example of the nation's biggest banks and credit card issuers refusing to recognize the real human impact of their harmful practices on consumers and working people around the country.

Working Americans should be able to tell their stories to Congress about the egregious abuses they have experienced without having to relinquish their basic privacy rights. Big banks may have succeeded today in gagging today's consumer witnesses but they will fail in squelching growing consumer outrage of millions of Americans who are sick and tired of the banks abuses. Today's occurrences only reinforce the huge power imbalance between banks and ordinary Americans.

The facts are undeniable-the industry's insistence on driving up credit card interest rates, hitting consumers with fee after fee, and other practices are pushing families to the brink of financial ruin and contributing to a national economic crisis.

It's not hard to understand how it might be uncomfortable to look working people in the eye when your business model is designed to make higher and higher profits at their expense. However the credit card industry and lawmakers plugging their ears to the hardships of American families suffering at hands of the nation's largest financial institutions isn't going to make it go away.