Chris Dodd: “I rise today to urge my strong support for S. 1753, the National Consumer Credit Reporting System Improvement Act of…”

“I rise today to urge my strong support for S. 1753, the National Consumer Credit Reporting System Improvement Act of 2003. I would like to commend both Chairman Shelby and Ranking Member Sarbanes on this legislation and the thoroughness of the hearings which preceded this legislation. I applaud their deep commitment and thank them for their strong leadership on this issue. This legislation is not perfect. It is not the bill that I would have written. Nor do I believe that this legislation represents a perfect bill from the perspective of the chairman or ranking member. However, I believe that it is a bipartisan bill that does a lot of very good things, and was put together in a very balanced manner. The Banking Committee, both during the hearing process and the mark-up of this legislation examined the numerous issues surrounding the Fair Credit Reporting Act: accuracy, privacy, security, financial literacy, among others. We learned some critical information during this process. I believe that the hearing process shed significant light on the positives of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and gave us insight on how to enhance its effectiveness. The consumer credit system is critically important to our nation's economy, and this legislation attempts to balance the greater access to credit for consumers, more efficiency in the credit granting process and the needs of consumers to have greater accuracy and privacy protections.”