Cliff Stearns: “I think we've talked about this bill, and it's a very good bill. I thought I might take from my colleagues and just read…”

“I think we've talked about this bill, and it's a very good bill. I thought I might take from my colleagues and just read the summary of it just to remind ourselves that H.R. 513 is to amend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to enhance the protection of credit ratings of active duty military personnel who are activated for military service. And the question usually comes up on some of these bills, what do they cost. Mr. Brady, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, talked about that. So we have a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate that I would share with my colleagues, and it says, ``The requirements imposed on credit reporting agencies would be private sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, the UMRA. CBO suspects the cost of the mandates would be minimal and unlikely to exceed the threshold for private sector mandates established in the UMRA.'' So, I think we have a bill that we can all support. So, obviously on this side, we do support it. The bill, as amended, will improve the protections of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by providing the opportunity for certain servicemembers experiencing financial difficulties, while deployed, to simply request that their credit record be annotated to reflect simply that deployment. It also requires the credit industry to take such deployment into consideration. This new protection, my colleagues, would cover credit accounts opened before the servicemember was deployed.”