The bane to many worker stiffs is the dreaded overdraft fee when you spend a little ytoo much and do not have the funds to cover it…..you know the $30 you pay to the bank and the $25 you pay to the business….the very things that make your deposit smaller than it should be.

Well guess what?  Looks like the Congress will take up the plight of the consumer and his battle with overdrafts.  As reported in the WaPo:

A backlash is brewing on Capitol Hill against banks that charge large fees for overdrafts without asking or telling customers, the latest sign that the financial crisis is shifting the balance of power from banks toward borrowers.

Banks struggling to survive have become increasingly reliant on the fees, which could total $38.5 billion this year.

But congressional Democrats, who pushed through new restrictions on credit cards this spring, now are promising a crackdown on overdraft fees, using words like “criminal” and “rip-off” to describe the practice of letting people overspend and then charging them fees without warning. Most overdrafts are now incurred on debit card transactions.

The attack on overdraft fees comes as Congress is considering a fundamental overhaul of financial regulation. The Obama administration has proposed the creation of a new agency empowered to write and enforce rules protecting consumers in financial transactions, removing that power from banking regulators. Dodd also favors the creation of a single agency to oversee the health of banks, consolidating a responsibility held by four agencies.

Moebs Services projects that the industry will make $38.5 billion off the fees this year, up from $18 billion in 1999, in part because the average fee large banks charge for each overdraft has climbed by $10, to $35.

Industry groups argue that customers are responsible for monitoring their account balances, that overdrafts should not happen unintentionally and that overdraft loans — the money advanced automatically to cover the overdraft — are a service that banks offer.

So far not much has been out there about this issue, but I see it becoming a heated debate, especially if banks see one of the sources of revenue drying up.  Of course this will be part of the “new” financial reform bill, but it will be interesting to see how this will play in the media and therefore in the debate that will follow.