Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Wyoming. Our relationship and friendship has been growing over the years. I respect him so much as one of the real voices of retailers and small business. I had an opportunity to spend some time visiting China with him and his wife. We got to sit down and talk about their lives and what they have been through.
My colleague knows the small business side of this world better than anybody who sits in this Chamber. As I listened to him talking about the solution to this problem, I could not help but nod affirmatively. There is no reason we should have had to vote a year ago to establish this interchange fee. It reflected the fact that retailers, small businesses, merchants, hotels, restaurants, and shopkeepers across the board were literally given no seat at the table to discuss the fairness and propriety of these interchange fees. The point he made drives it home. The credit card networks, working through the banks, are charging our businesses in America the highest interchange fees--that is the fee charged every time someone swipes that plastic debit card--of any country in the world. The interchange fee in Canada is zero; in the United States, 44 cents on average on every transaction.
I could not agree with the Senator more. If the banks would come down out of their ivory towers on Wall Street and other places and sit down, roll up their sleeves with the folks running shoe stores and grocery stores and hotels and restaurants, and say all right, we are going to come up with a fairer system--if it is zero in Canada and it is 44 cents here, there is a number in between that can make sense to both sides. If that were the case, the Senator and I would be working on some other issues rather than this one.
But my colleague is so right. Today we have to defeat the Tester-Corker amendment; otherwise, we are sending a massive subsidy to the biggest banks on Wall Street, up to $8 billion a year that they collect in these debit card interchange fees at the expense of small businesses and consumers all across America.
I thank the Senator for his support. I know later this afternoon at 2 o'clock when we face this vote it is an important vote for every small business in his home State and mine as well. I thank the Senator for taking the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source