Regarding the Editor's Column ["Congress: Expand CU Business Lending Now," April 4 issue].
My work is representing community banks, and they feel credit unions entering the same business is a fundamental unfairness that community banks will never understand nor tolerate.
We don't want to "run credit unions off the face of the earth." We actually work well together on issues like debit interchange, and we respect the credit union sector.
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For hypothetical purposes let's throw out fighting credit unions and community banks and say they are flower shops. One flower shop on the left side of the street sell roses to anyone and pays taxes. The other flower shop on the right side of the street sell roses to anyone but doesn't pay taxes or rent for a 40% plus tax advantage. There is a fundamental, un-American, non-free-market injustice there for the taxpaying flower shop. That is at the heart of this debate.
I feel good about presenting that unfairness and helping to ensure that the unfairness doesn't get even bigger. But credit unions can use politics to trump facts and good policy and have their cake and eat it too.
Paul G. Merski
Executive Vice President
Independent Community Bankers of America
Washington, D.C.
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