Rep. McCarthy Working to Help Stay-at-Home Spouses Gain Financial Stability Through Fair Access to Credit

Press Release

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY4), a member of the Financial Services Committee and the first and only woman to ever represent a part of Long Island in Congress, went to bat for stay-at-home spouses at a hearing about an unfair banking practice in Washington today.

"Like the Paycheck Fairness Act, this is simply a matter fundamental economic fairness that Congress can and should do something about," Rep. McCarthy said after the hearing. "A small tweak of the law could help countless stay-at-home spouses, including military spouses, gain the credit access that they rightfully deserve."

The hearing sought to shed light on a practice under the recent CARD Act in which banks would deny credit to stay-at-home spouses because the banks would not recognize household income, which in reality is often shared between spouses along with expenses.

Ashley Boyd, campaign director for MomsRising, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring and protecting family economic security, echoed Rep. McCarthy's concerns at the hearing: "Requiring a credit card company to consider individual, rather than household income in all cases, may unfairly and unreasonably impact stay-at-home parents who often have contributed to the sound management of their households' finances."

Rep. McCarthy put added emphasis on military spouses at the hearing, asking Gail Hillebrand of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look specifically at how this "ability to pay" provision in granting credit has impacted the military community, which is "at an extreme disadvantage if one spouse is deployed, and not able to fill out the credit form on behalf of a stay-at-home spouse."

Rep. McCarthy also asked regulators to look for ways to protect divorced, widowed or abused spouses, for whom access to credit is complicated by the lack of a current, living or cooperative spouse.

Finally, Rep. McCarthy noted the necessity of establishing a credit history for basic life transactions like renting or buying a home, buying a car and setting up utilities, and that "the ability-to-pay provision in the Federal Reserve's rule doesn't [help] someone's ability to establish credit, as credit history can be built by being an "authorized user' on a joint account.

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