Credit card bill of rights passed without five-day break

The camera lights still outshine sunlight at the Obama White House. In his latest violation of this promise, President Barack Obama signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 on May 22, only two days after the bill was finalized in Congress.

The law doesn't take effect for a full year, so it clearly is not emergency legislation.

The law stops credit card companies from increasing rates without notice and requires them to post their rules on the Internet, among other things. (When Obama signed it, we rated Promise No. 33, Establish a credit card bill of rights , Promise Kept.)

The White House Web site posted a form for public comment on the bill at some point during the legislative process, though we were not able to detect an exact date. We do know that it could not have allowed five days for public comment after passage, because Obama signed the bill after two days. The last time we checked with the White House on this, they said they were still working "implementation procedures."

We should also note that the White House doesn't make it easy for people to find where to leave comments on pending legislation. The Web site does not have a tab for comments or pending legislation and, when we finally discovered the undated comment area for the credit card bill through a global search of the White House site, it wasn't clear where it was located on the site or where people should go for future comments.

We are not documenting every time Obama breaks this promise, but we do intend to check back periodically. We still rate it Promise Broken.