The Congress has enacted legislation to punish those slacking consumers whose credit card debts have gotten away from them by making bankruptcy laws tougher. Credit card companies have cited a current delinquency rate of 3.39 percent past 30 days if I recall the news story correctly, and I believe that I do. But what we do not know and are not told is just who is in that data base of delinquents? For I fear that we have just been handed a particularly cruel form of taxation to make up for a governmental shortfall.

The government has used credit cards for travel for some twenty years and for small purchases since 1989. Unlike us mortals, who must bear the interest and penalties if late, the government can simply pass legislation. It has done so, did so long ago, the Prompt Payment Act (As Amended). Under the Act, the government does pay interest when late, but they have more lead time, and it's substantially less interest than paid by the hapless consumer.

I established and managed a major credit card program that was in the neighborhood of $130 million dollars per year when I retired in 1999 and came back home to Florida. In a decade, I never saw anything like a 3.39 percent delinquency rate — I thought 8-10 percent cause for celebration, and those delinquencies were past due over 60 days, not 30! And the banks that have "won" these contracts are not doing well on the stock market. (Certainly the bank handling procurement contracts has not; in spring 2000, its stock lost 36 percent of its value.) If the federal government's delinquency rate is currently even as low as 10 to 12 percent, I would be surprised.

And do keep in mind that the government uses 60 days, not 30, so they're twice as delinquent as you are, at the starting gate.

In 1996-97 the government "reformed" these contracts. The business centers became smaller, arbitrarily established units, not corresponding to officially designated offices, installations, or components. This allegedly speeded payments. It didn't. But it did thoroughly obfuscate credit reports, thereby keeping government bonds highly rated, even though the payment offices in bankers' eyes tend to look like deadbeats. If you were consistently a couple of months late and forever quibbling about making partial payments, what do you think your interest rate would be? Assuming you could get credit at all?

Credit card companies with their billions-worth dollars in government contracts are taking a bath — so Congress, rather than paying up, has let credit-card companies make up the government's deficit on the rest of us.

Fairness would of course dictate further amending of the Prompt Payment Act so that it reflects something like reality. But that merely fixes the problem. It passes over the opportunity to punish millions of innocent people for the sins of their government, and that's just irresistible it would seem. How well and truly we are served!