Volunteers collect the maximum allowed 30,000 signatures from all 83 counties to place Levin on ballot
SOUTHFIELD - Senator Carl Levin filed for re-election to the U.S. Senate today by submitting 30,000 signatures from all 83 Michigan counties to the Bureau of Elections in Lansing. Michigan law requires all U.S. Senate candidates from the two major parties to file a minimum of 15,000 signatures, and a maximum of 30,000 signatures, from registered Michigan voters in order for the candidate’s name to appear on the ballot.
“I am proud that these signatures were collected with a grassroots, all-volunteer effort in every county in Michigan,” said Senator Levin. “The people of Michigan have given me the wonderful privilege of serving our state and our country, and I appreciate the work of thousands of volunteers throughout the state to collect signatures and give me the opportunity to continue that service.”
Highlights of Senator Levin’s nominating petition gathering effort:
Legal maximum of 30,000 signatures were submitted.
Signatures from all 83 of Michigan’s counties.
Grassroots, all-volunteer effort.
Over 2,500 volunteers circulated petitions on behalf of Senator Levin.
“Michigan and the nation face enormous challenges, and the 2008 election will be important in setting our course to meet those challenges,” Levin said. “Creating jobs, fighting for manufacturing, making affordable health care available to all Americans, ending the speculation and gouging which have helped drive up gas prices, ending the war in Iraq and restoring America’s image in the world are some of the major ones.”
Mr. President, day after day record-high oil and gasoline prices are hurting millions of American consumers and businesses. Unless something is done to make energy more affordable, the record-high prices will continue to reverberate throughout our economy, increasing the prices of transportation, food, manufacturing and everything in between. Skyrocketing energy prices are a threat to our economic and national security, and the time is long past for action.
Before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit
Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Biggert, and Members of the Subcommittee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify today and add to your legislative record a description of some of the work on unfair credit card practices that has been conducted in the other body, by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair. I would also like to commend this Subcommittee and the full Financial Services Committee for the important work you have been doing to expose credit card abuses. The Maloney-Frank bill you are considering today, H.R. 5244, includes valuable provisions which would alleviate many of the credit card abuses hurting American families. It’s impressive that the bill already has 95 cosponsors. (more…)
The progress this bill represents is overdue. The foreclosure crisis is dire, and there is much still to be done. But this bill offers some immediate help. (more…)
Welcome General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Thank you for joining us today, and thank you for your service to our nation. Please express our deep gratitude to the brave men and women serving in Iraq both in our armed forces and in the civilian agencies of our government. (more…)
Tax cheats come in all shapes and sizes, so it would be hard to pick out of a lineup the 100 Americans whom the IRS suspects of hiding funds in Liechtenstein, a tiny Alpine country known for opening bank accounts and accepting large deposits of funds with few questions asked. (more…)
Americans are struggling with a very rocky economy while they are also holding almost $1 trillion in credit card debt. In most cases, those cards provide a little flexibility with the monthly bills. But an increasing number of people are defaulting because of the “tricks and traps” — soaring interest rates and hidden fees — in the credit card business. (more…)
By Senator Carl Levin and DNC Member Debbie Dingell
POLITICAL leaders in Michigan and elsewhere have long questioned the stranglehold Iowa and New Hampshire have on the presidential nominating process. In most election years, the candidates seem to spend more time in those two states than in all the others put together. The early states usually pick the party nominees, leaving the large majority of states with little influence in this critical national decision. (more…)
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and senior Committee Member John Warner, R-Va., today asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review Iraqi oil revenues and determine how much money the Iraqi government has contributed to security and reconstruction efforts in the country. The senators voice concern that the Iraqi government has tremendous resources sitting in banks around the world while not doing nearly enough to improve the quality of life of Iraqi citizens. (more…)
I urge my colleagues to support the Intelligence Authorization conference report which includes a requirement that all government agencies, including the CIA, comply with the Army Field Manual on Interrogations in the treatment and interrogation of detainees. (more…)
Mr. President, last year Congress passed a temporary bill with a six month time limit that would give us the opportunity to carry out a thorough, thoughtful examination of how to utilize complicated new technologies in the surveillance of suspected terrorists without invading the privacy of innocent Americans. In the months since we passed that temporary act, we have worked in a bipartisan manner to consider the best course forward for permanent changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Despite the enormous complexity of these issues, we reached a bipartisan consensus on the key provisions contained in Title I of the bill we are considering today. (more…)
Tonight the Senate will vote on the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General. His nomination comes at a critical time. At this moment in history, America is faced with serious challenges both at home and abroad. We are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and are engaged in a long-term struggle against al Qa’ida and other extremists. Military might alone will not be enough for us to win these fights. Strengthening America’s security requires us to harness the power of our ideals and values and lead a global effort to confront these threats. When we project moral hypocrisy or suggest that our commitment to our fundamental values depends on the circumstances, we lose the support of the world in our common efforts against common enemies, thereby compromising our own security.
The most striking feature of any visit to Iraq is the bravery and professionalism of American troops. And their courage, combined with the increased Iraqi army capability and willingness to fight, has resulted in some reduced violence in some places in Iraq.
Despite that, there’s a continuing — as a matter of fact, I’d say a deepening — consensus that there is no military solution to the sectarian strife in Iraq, and that the only hope of ending that violence is political compromise between the leaders of the feuding groups.
But the political leaders continue to ignore the desperate situation that their people find themselves in, and recent discussions among top political leaders have apparently produced little or nothing.
That failure has reinforced the widely held view that the Maliki government is nonfunctional and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders.
Iraqi leaders have not met their own political benchmarks to share power and resources and to modify the de-Baathification laws and to schedule provincial elections and to amend their constitution.
So I hope that the Iraqi assembly, when it reconvenes in a few weeks, will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and a more unifying prime minister and government.
In an editorial published this week, The New York Times highlighted the predatory and deceitful practices that have become commonplace in the banking and credit card industries.
A bill introduced by Senator Levin would limit “penalty” interest rates to an additional 7 percent above the previous rate. It would also prohibit retroactive penalties and double cycle billing, and it would limit the amount of fees companies could charge customers who exceed their credit limit.
Passing the Levin bill would be a good start. But Congress needs a comprehensive approach to this problem. Lawmakers need to ban deceptive card offers outright, strengthen federal oversight and toughen truth-in-lending laws.
Meanwhile, American consumers should think long and hard before they accept credit card offers that are too good to be true.
Click the play button to hear Sen. Levin
deliver the weekly Democratic Radio Address
(Download 4.0 MB MP3)
Text of the Address, as delivered:
Good morning, this is Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
This week, the Senate had the opportunity to do what most Americans want us to do: change course in Iraq. Although a bipartisan majority of the Senators supported an amendment to do just that, we were blocked by the Republican leadership from voting on it.
Now in its fifth year, the Iraq war has cost more than 3,600 American lives, seven times that many wounded and over a half a trillion dollars.
President Bush claims that we must keep paying this terrible price to protect America from terrorism. But even the Administration’s own intelligence experts are saying that during the war in Iraq there has been an increase in the threat of terrorism and that Al Qaeda has regained its strength.
Last week, Senator Jack Reed and I offered an amendment to begin reducing U.S. troops in Iraq and to change their mission to get us out from the middle of a civil war.
The Republican leadership chose to filibuster our amendment to deny the majority the opportunity to vote on it.
Senator Levin, Governor Granholm, and the Michigan Democratic Congressional Delegation unveil a comprehensive plan - the American Manufacturing Initiative - to revitalize our domestic manufacturing industry and reverse the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Mr. President, I am introducing today, along with Senator McCaskill, the Stop Unfair Practices in Credit Cards Act.
Credit cards are a fixture of American family life today. People use them to buy groceries, rent a car, shop on the Internet, pay college tuition, even pay their taxes. In 2005, the average family had 5 credit cards, and American households used nearly 700 million credit cards to buy goods and services worth $1.8 trillion.
Credit cards fuel commerce, facilitate financial planning, and help families deal with emergencies. But credit cards have also contributed to record amounts of household debt. Some credit card issuers have socked families with sky-high interest rates of 25%, 30%, and higher, and have hit consumers with hefty fees for late payments, for exceeding a credit limit, and other transactions. In too many cases, credit card issuers have made it all but impossible for working families to climb out of debt.
The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Embryonic stem cell research is truly a life-giving process because of the extraordinary potential for healing living, breathing human beings with names, faces, and families. It could hold the key to curing diseases that no other research could cure, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, juvenile diabetes, spinal cord injuries, and many others.
How in the name of promoting life can you justify not using stem cells from embryos, which uniquely can become any other kind of cell, for a life-giving purpose when those embryos are going to be discarded anyway by fertility clinics who can’t use them?
I, and 8,578 people who have written to me expressing their support for this legislation, respectfully urge you to sign The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 to allow our scientists to pursue the full promise of embryonic stem cell research.
Sincerely,
Carl Levin
Enclosure: CD-ROM containing the names of all 8,578 co-signers
WASHINGTON — Major oil companies “are getting away with murder” and “gouging” consumers as the price of oil continues to soar, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin said at a press conference today. (more…)
Americans are struggling with a very rocky economy while they are also holding almost $1 trillion in credit card debt. In most cases, those cards provide a little flexibility with the monthly bills. But an increasing number of people are defaulting because of the “tricks and traps” — soaring interest rates and hidden fees — in the credit card business. (more…)
By John Poirier, Reuters, 02/08/2008
Congress is likely to move toward final legislation this year to reform often-criticized marketing and billing practices by credit card companies, a senior U.S. lawmaker said on Friday.
Wealthy Americans dodge more than $100 billion a year in taxes by hiding assets in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens, said a senior lawmaker on Friday who is trying to put a stop to it. (more…)
Credit issuers jack up rates, even if you pay on time
USA Today Editorial, Dec. 11, 2007
Retroactive ‘risk-based’ pricing is unfair; Congress should outlaw it.
Bonnie Rushing, a paralegal in Naples, Fla., sounds like just the sort of customer any bank would want to cultivate. She told Congress last week that she has never missed or even been late on her credit card payments, despite a financial setback last year. (more…)
Credit card companies must end deceptive practices or face tighter regulation
Detroit Free Press, December 9, 2007
Editorial
It was not easy for Janet Hard to air her family’s financial laundry in the very public setting of a U.S. Senate hearing last week. But the Freeland, Mich., woman helped expose one of the more onerous and underpublicized practices of credit card companies.
The Detroit News, Tuesday, December 11, 2007Editorial
U.S. Sen. Carl Levin has doggedly uncovered a slew of unfair and suspect practices in the credit card industry. The Michigan Democrat wants satisfactory responses from banks but is also ready with tougher consumer protection laws if needed.
Ho ho ho. Just in time for the holiday spending season, members of Congress are skewering credit card companies for pushing allegedly abusive business practices on unwitting customers.
Tuesday, a panel led by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., will haul in executives from Discover, Bank of America and Capital One Financial . The lawmakers want to know why they raise customers’ interest rates when those customers have a solid payment history.
In an editorial published this week, The New York Times highlighted the predatory and deceitful practices that have become commonplace in the banking and credit card industries.
A bill introduced by Senator Levin would limit “penalty” interest rates to an additional 7 percent above the previous rate. It would also prohibit retroactive penalties and double cycle billing, and it would limit the amount of fees companies could charge customers who exceed their credit limit.
Passing the Levin bill would be a good start. But Congress needs a comprehensive approach to this problem. Lawmakers need to ban deceptive card offers outright, strengthen federal oversight and toughen truth-in-lending laws.
Meanwhile, American consumers should think long and hard before they accept credit card offers that are too good to be true.
While he gets most of his attention as one of the chief critics of the conduct of the war in Iraq, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin plunges today into a domestic issue of enormous impact for Americans: abusive practices by credit card companies.
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the Democratic-controlled Congress not to interfere in the conduct of the Iraq war and suggested President Bush would defy troop withdrawal legislation.
But Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers would step up efforts to force Bush to change course. “The president needs a check and a balance,” said Levin, D-Mich. (more…)
WASHINGTON — Senator Carl Levin said today that the nation needs “a surge of concern” for wounded Iraq veterans, after media reports found decrepit conditions and bureaucratic red tape interfering with the care of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. (more…)
Committee chairman says Democrats do not have enough votes yet
WASHINGTON - A top U.S. Senate Democrat said Sunday his party aims to limit the role of the nearly 140,000 American troops in Iraq and withdraw most of them from the war-torn country within a year. (more…)
Senator sends staffers to White House, Pentagon to ask questions about how Iraq war started.
WASHINGTON — Michigan’s senior U.S. senator, Democrat Carl Levin, said Friday he plans to delve more deeply into the story of how the United States went to war in Iraq, sending staffers to interview key White House and Pentagon officials about how dubious intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11 terrorist attacks became part of the justification for the 2003 invasion. (more…)
WASHINGTON — An investigation by the Pentagon’s internal watchdog of the run-up to the Iraq war shows top Defense Department officials manipulated intelligence on Iraq’s relationship with al-Qaida, Sen. Carl Levin said today. (more…)
The sight of Sen. Carl Levin behind a committee dais might not scare government and corporate witnesses, but it should.
The Michigan Democrat lacks the witness-bashing bombast of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or the central-casting courtliness of Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va. But few lawmakers use their question time as judiciously or as effectively as Levin, whose tenacious yet civil interrogating routinely elicits closely guarded information from even the most hostile witnesses. (more…)
WASHINGTON — Two senators leading separate efforts to put Congress on record against President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq joined forces today, agreeing on a nonbinding resolution that would criticize the plan.
Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., had been sponsoring competing measures opposing Bush’s strategy of sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to the war zone, with Warner’s less harshly worded version attracting more Republican interest. The new resolution would vow to protect funding for troops while keeping Warner’s original language expressing the Senate’s opposition to the troop buildup. (more…)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Carl Levin proposed Tuesday that any future treaty on global climate change allow the United States to ban goods from countries that violate standards on carbon emissions. (more…)
