"We’re going to make an effort and I think we’re going to succeed," said Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat set to take over the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations when the 110th U.S. Congress convenes on Jan. 4.

Levin said he was seeking witnesses whose accounts of credit card-related woes would dramatize "unfair, abusive fees that are imposed by the companies that run our lending."

He predicted passage of legislation as part of a Democratic-led push for increased regulation and consumer education involving the 700 million credit cards he said were used last year in the United States to buy $1.8 trillion in goods and services.

Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who will head the Senate Banking Committee, plans to introduce credit card-related legislation, Levin said at credit card forum sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a public policy research group. A spokeswoman for Dodd had no immediate comment.

Levin’s hearings would be designed to illustrate the toll taken on some credit card users by what he described as inadequate disclosures, arcane billing practices and "fee piled upon fee, piled upon penalty."

Levin’s panel is part of the committee that oversees homeland security and governmental affairs. It has jurisdiction to conduct complex investigations into a wide range of alleged abuses.

Referring to the Nov. 7 midterm elections that gave Democrats control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 12 years, Levin said the vote reflected not only concern about Iraq, but underlying pocketbook concerns of working-class families.

"We’ve got a mandate, I believe, we’ve got momentum," he said, adding that he expected opposition from an industry he said had been thriving in part on "unfair and confusing practices."

The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm, said in a report released last month that increased complexity in credit card rates and fees boosted the need for more effective disclosure to consumers.

Penalties for late credit card payments in the United States had more than doubled in a decade, but disclosures of such fees were written in language too complicated for many consumers to understand, said the GAO report requested by Levin.

The average penalty in 2005 for making a late credit card payment was $34, up from $13 in 1995, a 115 percent increase.
In the report, GAO examined the six largest credit card issuers of 2004: Citigroup’s Citibank (South Dakota); JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chase Bank USA; Bank of America Corp.; MBNA, now merged with Bank of America; Capitol One Financial Corp.’s Capital One Bank; and Morgan Stanley’s Discover Financial Services.