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By Kendall Barker [Special to The Tennessee Conservative] –
I’m not surprised to hear that Senate Democrats in Washington are trying to take over greater control over how Americans spend their money. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), one of the most liberal members of Congress, is proposing to add more regulations to credit cards in America. This will be disastrous for consumers in Tennessee and across the country.
Such a move is not new for Sen. Durbin. After all, twelve years ago he amended the already-terrible Dodd-Frank banking bill to mandate price controls and routing restrictions on debit cards, requiring merchants to link with at least two unaffiliated network providers – one of which is UnionPay. UnionPay has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is considered the world’s largest card network. So every time Americans swipe their debit cards, they are handing their financial data to the CCP.
Sen. Durbin’s amendment was a huge national security threat and should never have passed. His new bill to regulate our credit cards raises similar national security concerns. It is well known that companies associated with the CCP are a threat to the security of private information and an invitation for espionage. So why would we allow the largest card network associated with the CCP to monitor transactions in America?
The security implications of regulating credit cards in America would be detrimental for all of us. Millions of Americans would be sending their financial information directly to the CCP without knowing it, and new and arbitrary caps on fees that retailers pay as part of credit card transactions would make it harder for banks to implement security checks. No matter how the Democrats try to frame it, it ultimately means you are trading in your financial privacy for more government control.
Price controls would not help working-class families, it would put further strain on them on top of the record-high inflation we see at the grocery store and gas pump every day. Just look at the effects of Durbin’s amendment on debit cards in Dodd-Frank: free checking availability declined at banks targeted by Sen. Durbin’s amendment by a whopping 35 percent, according to the Federal Reserve. In a study by Boston University, low-income consumers were shown to have lost benefits that resulted in a loss of $160.
It is comical that Sen. Durbin and his liberal colleagues think the federal government has any place in regulating how Americans spend their hard-earned money. If anything, the federal government should take notes from Tennessee and how we allow people to live their lives freely. Every Tennessean would agree with me when I say the federal government should not regulate our credit cards.
In Tennessee, we’re fortunate to have Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty who are leaders in protecting our data privacy, especially from adversaries like Communist China. They also are leaders in fighting for hard-working Tennesseans to keep their hard-earned money. I sincerely urge both Senators Blackburn and Hagerty to once again lead the fight to stop Sen. Durbin and his Democrat colleagues from regulating our credit cards and stop possibly one of the costliest regulations in American history.
About the Author: Kendall Barker is a business development professional from Knoxville, Tennessee.
