October 13, 2022
For over 20 years, Americans have been questioned by a credit card catchphrase asking, “What’s in your wallet?” The more relevant question today is who is in your wallet, given the activist lawmakers in Washington eager to regulate nearly every aspect of our financial lives. And once again, we open our wallets to find Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) settling in and making himself comfortable.
Aside from earning a spot on the Mt. Rushmore of Senate tax raisers over his career, Durbin has gone above and beyond, raiding Americans’ wallets – specifically their debit cards – with vigor in 2010 through an amendment to the Dodd-Frank law that bears his name. The Durbin Amendment was purportedly aimed at lowering debit card fee transactions for consumers. What we’ve learned in that time is startling: Capping debit card fees resulted in higher costs for consumers, but larger profits for retailers.
anks responded to the loss in exchange fee revenue by raising other rates and fees, eliminating free checking and wiping away nearly all of the benefits and rewards they offered with their branded debit cards. Durbin’s “pro-consumer” legislation wound up costing consumers billions, the loss of perks and benefits and priced millions out of owning a bank account.
Now, along with his friends in the big-box retailer industry, Durbin is back for round II in his ideological rumble against America’s banks, pushing legislation titled “the Credit Card Competition Act of 2022.” Under the guise of creating “more competition” in credit card exchanges used by merchants, Durbin is primed to rob consumers of credit card benefits just as he did with debit cards.
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