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By Pat McGrew, McGrewGroup, Inc., with Linda Fried, JD, LLM, University of Colorado Business School (Retired) 

Our legislators impact what goes into the mail in many ways, whether it is regulatory or marketing-oriented. There are rules and regulations based on the practical considerations of moving billions of pieces of mail, and then there are the impacts on design and the handling of data resulting from national and state legislation. Back in 1988, Chuck Schumer was a representative from New York State and sponsored the Fair Credit and Charge Card Disclosure Act of 1988 to ensure that consumers could easily determine their current obligations to institutions who issued them credit cards. Part of that legislation was the Schumer Box, designed to provide that information succinctly and efficiently to help consumers determine how long their debt would take to pay off. The result was the addition of content to every credit card bill. To be fair, by the time the law went into effect, many weren’t ready because what seemed like a simple addition often required a complete redesign of the bills.