Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I will be brief because I see my friend from Iowa is on the floor here. I want to give him a chance to speak. The Federal Government pays interchange fees when people use credit and debit cards to pay for things such as admission to national parks, groceries, at military commissaries, tickets on Amtrak, and copays for VA medical services. In fiscal year 2007, our Federal Government paid $433 million in credit card fees. The vast majority were interchange fees. Last year, the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, which I chair, asked the Treasury Department to look into how much money taxpayers are paying to credit card companies for the use of credit cards. We got the report this week. It concludes that Treasury could save at least $36 to $39 million a year if it did several things, such as negotiating the actual interchange rates charged to the Federal Government. We had a hearing today, and an employee of the Department of the Treasury came and testified and said the Federal Government of the United States was unable to negotiate an interchange fee with either Visa or MasterCard. The card companies refuse to negotiate. There is $8 billion in economic activity with the Treasury through the credit and debit cards of these two companies. But they refuse to negotiate with the Federal Government.…”