On the recordJune 7, 2011
I do wish to say that my friend from Montana has been a great partner in this effort. I know lots of times people use a lot of rhetoric down here to talk about what is happening and the fact that anyone who might be proposing this type of amendment might be supporting Wall Street institutions. But I think you can see that my friend from Montana is anything but Wall Street. Certainly, I think all of us are just trying to come up with a solution that makes sense. I wish to give a brief history. Dodd-Frank came to the floor last year. There were numbers of amendments to the bill. One of the amendments that came to the floor was called the Durbin amendment. It was an amendment that had no hearings. A lot of us--people such as myself who are opposed to price fixing--what the Durbin amendment said was that the Fed was going to set prices on debit transactions--were opposed to it. On the other hand, there were numbers of people in this Chamber who supported Durbin because they were frustrated with where retailers were and their inability to negotiate prices with Visa and some of the other companies. So they thought this might be a type of solution to that dilemma of not being able to have appropriate negotiations. I think what all have understood, regardless of where they are on this issue now, is that the Durbin amendment did not actually give the Fed the ability to set prices as it relates to cost on debit cards.…
