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…)
Senate armed services panel chair to ask Pentagon today to drop funds bid for rebuilding of police stations. (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 Barrie Barber, The Saginaw News, February 20, 2008
In the midst of the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin says federal lawmakers are looking for answers.
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.
By Kevin Drawbaugh, Reuters, 02/08/2008
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.
12.04.07, 6:00 AM ET
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.
The editorial specifically commended and endorsed Senator Levin’s legislation to end these unfair practices.
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.
Detroit Free Press
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.
By Hope Yen
Associated Press
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…)
Gordon Trowbridge
Detroit News
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…)
NBC News and news services
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…)
By Gordon Trowbridge
Detroit News
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…)
By Gordon Trowbridge
Detroit News
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…)
By Jonathan Allen
CQ Today
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…)
By Anne Flaherty
Associated Press
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…)
Gordon Trowbridge
Detroit News
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…)
