Today, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) urged all Senators to oppose Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin’s (D-IL) new amendment (#3932) – which merges the main provisions of two earlier amendments (#3769 and #3771) – to Senator Dodd’s S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.
Sen. Durbin wishes to give the Federal Reserve power to issue new rules regulating debit and credit card interchange fees.
Fees set for credit and debit card transactions should be negotiated by the merchant and the credit/debit companies based on their individual contractual agreements. Setting a blanket, national standard completely interferes with any free market negotiating power both sides currently enjoy.
It is not the job or role of the federal government to regulate the fees set by private companies in any matter. This is simply another attempt by Senate Democrats to regulate each and every aspect of our financial markets.
Rather then seeking to regulate private fee agreements set between merchants and creditors, Senators should focus on the other egregious problems currently contained in this bill.
ATR urges all members of the U.S. Senate to oppose not only Sen. Durbin’s “swipe fee” amendment #3932, but this entire bill as a whole.