WASHINGTON-HR 1151 may have been what introduced credit unions to then-U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, but it's not how LaTourette first came to know credit unions.
"As a young attorney just out of law school, someone told me that local credit union offered a $200 overdraft policy, so I signed right up. It meant I could keep drinking beer on Friday nights," he joked. "But all kidding aside, people love their credit unions, and they will get behind them."
LaTourette was chosen by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to be the lead Republican co-sponsor on the bill along with the Pennsylvania Democrat Paul Kanjorski, in part because LaTourette had just been selected to be on the House Banking Committee. And while HR 1151 was one of the first bills LaTourette helped shepherd through Congress, it was not the first.
"I was the lead sponsor on the National Invasive Species Act," he said. "It basically reauthorized the Non-indigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990."
While the two bills don't sound like they had much in common they do share at least one relatively unique element: swift passage. While most bills can languish for years, the National Invasive Species Act was introduced Sept. 28, 1996 and signed into law just one month later. HR 1151 took somewhat longer. It was introduced in 1997 but was put on the back-burner while the Supreme Court was considering the FOM case against NCUA. Once the high court handed down its decision, however, CUs and Congress kicked it into full gear, with the first hearing on the House side coming just days after the decision, a vote of the full House a month after that, and President Clinton signing it into law in August of 1998.
High-Profile Cases
But LaTourette was no stranger to high-profile controversy even before all of that. After graduating from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, LaTourette briefly served as a public defender and was then elected Lake County Prosecutor in Ohio, where he made his mark prosecuting the Kirtland, Ohio mass murder case involving cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren.
LaTourette was elected to the House in 1994 representing a northern Ohio district before retiring in 2012.
Leading up to his decision to retire, LaTourette was one of only seven Republicans to vote against eliminating all government funding of National Public Radio and was one of only two Republicans to vote against a motion to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his handling of the "Fast and Furious" gunrunning case.
