Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if Senator Tester returns to the floor and wants to speak before the vote, I will ask unanimous consent to each have 2 minutes for that purpose. Perhaps he is not going to, but I want to make this a matter of record here because I want to give him a chance to close. Let me try to get down to basics. Have my colleagues ever pulled out one of these cards to pay for something? If you are my age, you don't pull it out as often as younger people. This morning, I was down in the carryout here, and a young woman who is a Capitol police officer bought a pack of chewing gum for $1.20 and handed over her debit card. The debit card was swiped. She took the chewing gum and walked away. The average amount that is charged by the issuing bank of her debit card is 44 cents for each transaction. How much money do we think the owner of the carryout made on that pack of gum this morning? The answer is nothing. Now repeat that over and over again across America. What is happening is that the banks issuing these debit cards are imposing interchange fees, swipe fees, on these transactions, and the merchants and the retailers have no voice in the amount of that fee, no voice whatsoever. The Federal Reserve did a study and asked: Well, how much does it actually cost them to process that debit transaction? The answer was 12 cents, in the range of 12 cents. The charge is 44 cents; the cost is 12 cents. Is there something wrong with this picture?…”