WASHINGTON – Credit union representatives were noting the passing Tuesday night of Ted Kennedy, the iconic Boston liberal who spent almost 50 years in the Senate, noting his long-time support of consumer issues.
Kennedy , 77, died of complications caused by a brain tumor discovered last year.
"He has been supportive and helpful to credit unions over the years on a number of topics, especially as it relates to financial literacy and education issues and also how credit unions can help those working and in labor unions," said Fred Becker, president of NAFCU, who met with the Senator on several occasions.
Others remembered Kennedy’s long-time fight against the credit union-backed bankruptcy reform bill, which eventually passed over his opposition, even as he tacked on various amendments aimed at killing it or making it unpalatable to its supporters.
"He was always pro-consumer. He was for fairness," Jim Blaine, president of North Carolina SECU, who stood with the Massachusetts Senator in March 2005 against the bankruptcy bill supported by the majority of the credit union movement, said yesterday. "He was larger than life."
At a Capitol Hill news conference, Kennedy, with Blaine by his side, said the so-called means-based bankruptcy bill backed by credit unions, banks and credit card companies, would hurt people of modest means who were hurt by catastrophic life events, like a medical emergency, divorce or loss of job. Later, as the momentum grew for passage of the bill, he attached an amendment that would raise the minimum wage.
But Kennedy by then didn’t have the votes in Congress and the bankruptcy reform bill, 10 years in the making, was finally passed by a Republican controlled Congress and signed into law by Republican President Bush in 2005.
