WASHINGTON — From her first job at a small credit union to her current job in Congress, Barbara Lee has been working to help credit unions in one form or another.
Though today Lee is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives serving California's 13th Congressional district, in the early 1960s she worked at Pacoima Memorial Lutheran Credit Union.
"I was on work-study in high school," she said. "I was paid $1 an hour and went up to $1.25 an hour, and I worked there about two years." Lee recalled that her mother was a member of a different credit union and so she grew up in an environment where CUs were a part of normal family life.
These days Lee serves on the House Appropriations and Budget Committees, and she said the experience and education she received from credit unions has helped her along the way. Not only did she post account transactions on the NCR machine at Pacoima Memorial Lutheran CU, but she also learned how to do bookkeeping and customer service there, she said.
One of her most powerful memories with credit unions, she said, came during college, when a mentor from Berkeley Cooperative CU encouraged her to join the credit union when she needed to buy a house and a car. Having been a single mother on welfare at that time, she said, "I owe a debt of gratitude to credit unions, because they really provided the financial foundation for me early on in my life to understand finance and be involved in the financial structures of our country, and give me a pathway into the middle class."
Lee said she still believes that credit unions can have the same impact on others that they had on her, and she said that CUs have a tremendous opportunity right now to gain market share by investing in low-income communities and African-American communities.
"There was a void and is still a void in banking services in some areas, so I think credit unions have the opportunity to fill that void and provide financial services to people who don't have access to the bank services," she said. "You look at the payday loans and check-cashing opportunities, the type of charges and fees that they charge for people who are low-income are outrageous. Credit unions don't do that; credit unions really contribute to the economic viability of communities."
The eight-term Congresswoman was a co-signer on a letter to NCUA Chairman Debbie Matz earlier this year criticizing the agency's risk-based capital rule, and she said that with her position on the appropriations and budget committees, "any time any issues of financial services come before us, I intend to champion issues around credit unions."
While some analysts have told Credit Union Journal that there likely won't be much improvement in relations on either side of the aisle in the next Congress, Lee was optimistic about what the next legislative session might mean for credit unions.
"We often times have — on the appropriations and budget committees — issues around credit unions, and whatever those issues are, there are a lot of bipartisan issues that I think we can champion together with [U.S. Rep. Ed Royce] and other Republicans who want to see credit unions not only remain viable, but that they thrive," she said. "Credit unions cut across party lines, and we should be able to work together on whatever makes sense with regard to credit unions because of their importance to the country."
