The effort to enact into law the Credit Union Membership Access Act (HR 1151) was effectively a two-year marathon that generated scores of memories–good and bad, high and low, exciting and tedious, raw and urbane.
One stands out, for some reason–probably for the unexpected emotional impact.
In the early spring of 1998 the Supreme Court was still considering our appeal of the AT&T Family case. We had built a list of co-sponsors for HR 1151, which would overturn the appeals court decision, but most members of Congress were still sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see what happened with the Supreme Court decision.
For the same reason, we also had no immediate prospect of a hearing on our bill, much less a mark-up.
Like a number of others close to the process, I had received a head’s up the evening before the day the Supreme Court announced its decision in our case that, in fact, the decision would be announced the following day. So, the fact of a decision being announced came as no surprise to me the day it was announced.
But the decision announced did, in fact, surprise me.
“We lost,” was all the voice said over the phone that morning. I was stunned. Speechless. Breathless. Sad.
And I didn’t know why. In fact, later that morning, I was talking to a reporter about my reaction. “Oh, come on,” he said impatiently, “nobody really thought you were going to win.”
Well, I did. Maybe I was alone in that. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I made the supreme mistake of anybody in my position–I believed my own press. Or, maybe I was just so close to the whole thing–having worked on it nearly non-stop for 18 months–I couldn’t see reality. I just wasn’t sure.
But I was sure of one thing: what was at stake. We had to fix this thing if credit unions were going to survive.
I didn’t have much time to dwell on that, though–because things started to happen, quickly. The press was all over the story. House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced he would co-sponsor our bill (opening the floodgates to a cascade of other co-sponsors). Jim Leach declared he would schedule a hearing. And a whole lot more I can’t remember right now ...
And, by August, we fixed it. Consumers could continue to join credit unions.
And I felt OK about that.
