Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there are many issues which come before the Senate, and some are simple and some are complex. The issue I am going to speak to today is one which you are personally aware of, Mr. President, as the Senator from West Virginia, and one that more and more Members are becoming aware of. It is the question of interchange fees or swipe fees. For those who do not follow this closely, every time we use a credit card or a debit card in the United States of America, the retailer or merchant we do business with pays a fee to the bank that issues the card. The fee is established by the major credit card networks, Visa and MasterCard. They tell the banks how much they will receive each time a customer uses these cards. What it comes down to is the fee that is being charged, the debit card fee, has become a subject of controversy. Let's go back in history a little bit. I can still remember when people used checks, and some still do but not as frequently. Now we use the plastic form of a checking account. Instead of writing out a check and pushing it through the banking system, and for a few cents watching it be processed, we use a debit card. A debit card draws money directly out of our checking accounts to the merchant we are doing business with. So the debit card has, in fact, by a large measure, replaced checks-- and in many instances replaced cash--as more and more people are using plastic for transactions.…”