WASHINGTON — Credit union trade associations are already lined up to oppose CRA for credit unions.
"We'll continue to oppose it," said Fred Becker, president of NAFCU. "The question I ask is what problem are we trying to solve? Why impose on credit unions another regulatory burden? CRA was imposed on banks because of redlining. There is no evidence of credit union redlining. The current crisis is a result of other financial institutions doing redlining, subprime loans. "At this day and age, I wouldn't be trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. We've got enough problems," Becker added
Cliff Rosenthal, CEO of the National Federation of Community Development CU, said although Federation's member CUs would not be directly affected by the legislation, it does not support the extension of CRA to the rest of the credit union movement.
"We believe that adding CRA to the compliance costs faced by credit unions may, in fact, have the unintended consequence of decreasing resources and focus to compliance instead of maintaining or expanding the voluntary investments that credit unions have made, and are increasingly making," Rosenthal said. "We want to state clearly and emphatically that the Federation supports CRA and believes that it has been immensely important to the revitalization of our nation's distressed areas. We believe that CRA must, indeed, be expanded and modernized so that it reflects the migration of vast amounts of money to entities that are not subject to reinvestment regulations. However, especially at this time when the credit union system is under great stress, we do not support extension of CRA to credit unions."
