Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief because I want to get quickly to our witness today. I appreciate your calling this hearing and I hope that we, as a Committee, will move quickly to address the expiring provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
This session of Congress is going to move quickly and with just over 14 actual work weeks left before our target adjournment, the sooner we can began to move, the greater chances of having a thorough debate and passing the must-do legislation behind today's hearing.
The FCRA has served our country well over the past 33 years. Indeed, as a result of the statue, the improved access to consumers' previous credit-related behavior has allowed creditors all over the country to extend credit more quickly and priced on appropriate risk. People with low credit risks as a result of FCRA can now get lower rates and those with higher risks can now get credit with higher rates when previously they would have probably just been denied any credit at all. In addition, we no longer have to wait days and days or even weeks to get credit decisions. We can get them instantaneously. Furthermore, credit scoring models have taken much of the arbitrariness and guess work out of extending credit. All of this makes our economy more efficient saving time and allowing us to allocate the costs of borrowing appropriately.
Mr. Chairman, I believe we should do everything we can to bolster the system we have in place today. I hope as we re-examine the FCRA we will be careful to take no actions that would undermine or limit the effective and appropriate sharing of credit information. I also hope that we would make sure that consumers have full information about and absolute control over their personal credit information. We should also ensure that there are appropriate privacy safeguards under our law.
I commend you for your leadership on this issue, Mr. Chairman, as well as others on our Committee such as Senator Tim Johnson who has taken an active interest and has his own legislation dealing with FCRA. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues as we take up the reauthorization of the expiring provisions of the FCRA and I look forward to our FTC witness, before us today.
Thank you.