As President Obama met with bankers last week to discuss how they can help small businesses recover, CUNA President/CEO Dan Mica continued to reiterate that credit unions are doing their part and could be doing much more. "The only lobbyists who oppose giving credit unions the opportunity to do more small business lending represent the banks with whom the president met today," Mica said. "That's right: The same 'fat cat' bankers-as President Obama put it on national television Sunday night- who accepted billions of dollars of taxpayer money while restricting access to credit for consumers and small businesses, oppose allowing well-capitalized, not-for-profit credit unions to lend money to their small business-owning members." Mica reiterated CUNA's position that CUs could pump more than $10 billion into the economy if Congress would agree to expand credit union capacity to make business loans. "Were we in the room, the president could have easily pointed to us and said 'these guys want to help-why can't you be more like them?'" Mica said. Credit unions have urged Congress to support HR 3380, introduced by Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) and Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), to raise the statutory cap on business loans to 25% of assets from 12.25%, and treat as business loans only those of $250,000 or less.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to CUTimes.com, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited CUTimes.com content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking credit union news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Shared Accounts podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the commercial real estate and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, GlobeSt.com and ThinkAdvisor.com
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.