It is often missed in the discussion about our tax-exemption that it is also based on innovations that credit unions develop. When I started in our industry in 1968 before Reg Z, our competition usually quoted loan rates in discount rate terms, not in simple interest terms as all CU's did. Today's Congress and our younger CU staff and official family don't remember that an auto dealer would often quote a 6% discount rate loan to our members when we were charging 12% simple interest and steal loans from us. Six percent discount came to about 13% simple interest if I remember correctly. Banks did not use simple interest at the time either. This took a lot of explaining on our part. When Congress passed Reg Z, Congress sided with credit unions, telling everyone that the APR must be stated as a simple interest rate to compare apples to apples. I can recall a number of women in the `70s and `80s tell me that they received loans on the strength of their own character and credit from credit unions when they were turned down by banks. I think we could amass evidence that CUs helped break that credit barrier for women before Reg B prohibited such discrimination. More recently, Congress passed Check 21, which endorses check truncation. Credit unions truncated checks from day one. I believe it was Don McKinnon in his flamboyant style that had the first ever CU share draft written in Red China off a Dearborn Federal Credit Union account decades ago to prove share drafts were good anywhere in the world. And let's not forget that credit unions innovated and refined the idea of lending on the basis of character, not collateral. We made lending available to the masses. Banks followed in our footsteps on that one. Maybe we should offer to stay out of business lending if banks get out of consumer lending. In short, credit unions are incubators of financial ideas that serve every citizen of our country. Congress has three times incorporated our practices, as mentioned above, into law for the whole country. To penalize this ingenuity with taxation would be counter productive. Phillip A. Matous President Taylor Community Credit Union Taylor, Mich.