RUSH: I think that we were the first here at the EIB Network to tie in particular Durbin to the new fee that banks are charging, the $5 fee to use your debit card. I think we were the first to tie Durbin to that. When the story was originally reported that there’s a new fee from Bank of America, $5 use your debit card, people had the standard reaction: “Yeah, dirty, rotten evil greedy banks!” and I pointed out that it was all because of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill and an amendment added to it by Dick Durbin. Now, we have a Politico story today. “Dick Durbin Urges Customers to Leave Bank of America.” I want you to stop and think about this for a second.
This is the Senate majority whip, and he went to the floor of the United States Senate yesterday and made a speech urging citizens who are customers of Bank of America to leave the bank. Now, is this the role of United States senators? Is this the role of anybody in government, to stand up in their official capacity and to tell you where you should and should not conduct business? Of course it’s not! Who the hell does he think he is? This is not the proper role of government, to tell you what bank to use — especially what’s going on here is a giant CYA. Durbin knows that this is all happening because of him, and The Politico is reporting that.
“Angry about Bank of America’s new $5 monthly fee for using your debit card? Dick Durbin has some advice for you: Take your money elsewhere. ‘Bank of America customers, vote with your feet,’ the Senate majority whip said in a floor speech Monday. ‘Get the heck out of that bank. Find yourself a bank or credit union that won’t gouge you for $5 a month and still will give you a debit card that you can use every single day. ‘What Bank of America has done is an outrage,’ he added. Bank of America announced last week that it will soon start charging most of its customers $5 per month for using their debit card — a move intended to recoup the revenue…'”
This is The Politico reporting this: “[A] move intended to recoup the revenue that the bank will lose under new federal regulations that went into effect Oct. 1. Those rules, authored by Durbin, capped the amount of swipe fees — what banks can charge retailers for processing debit cards.” So where to begin with all of this! The so-called Durbin amendment, which was tacked on to the already despicable Dodd-Frank bill at the last minute, is what caused these fees to increase in the first place. And we’re back again to the same old thing: Dynamic versus static scoring. These central planners — these people who want to put their nose in your tent, run your life and every business’ life — believe that when they issue a dictate, when they issue a new law, that people are just again sit there and basically bend over and grab the ankles and take the pain.
How many times has this kind of thing happened? These people ought to understand that when a new regulation that raises costs is imposed on a business, they’re gonna find a way to recoup it. It’s the only responsible thing for a business to do. It’s only dunderheaded liberals who expect the enemies of the state to willingly and happily just sit there, take it, and go out of business — and I mean it. To Dick Durbin and the left, Bank of America — most American corporations and most American industries — are indeed enemies of the state. You take a look at Democrat Party enemies list and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Who the hell does Dick Durbin think he is? A floor speech at the United States Senate telling Bank of America customers to scram?
He’s the one responsible for this $5 fee on debit cards with his stupid amendment. He wanted to score big points with consumers by punishing the bank. He was sitting there thinking the bank’s gonna sit there and eat these new charges, costs that are imposed upon them by the statist government — and when that doesn’t happen, these guys got all offended like they’ve somehow been personally ignored. But the Durbin amendment was tacked on to the already stupid Dodd-Frank bill at the last minute and that’s what caused these fees to increase in the first place. So if you object to this new $5 fee, your real target should be to send Dick Durbin home. Your real target should be Dick Durbin.
If you live in Illinois, Dick Durbin deserves to be defeated. He’s the problem here, not Bank of America or any other bank. Maybe Durbin is just competing with Chuck-U Schumer by trying to destroy another bank. Schumer did this, as you’ll recall, when he caused a run on the IndyMac bank in California and thereby started a panic that probably started the financial collapse that led to the Great Recession. I just think this is just way over the top. It is another great illustration of who Democrats are, how they want to literally run every aspect of your life. Telling you…? Trying to create a run on Bank of America? Durbin is the one responsible for this. He’s blissfully unaware of the unintended consequences of his actions — just downright, plain old-fashioned stupid.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Where is the Democrat National Convention next summer? Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, Charlotte, North Carolina, happens to be the world headquarters of who? Bank of America. So here is Dick Durbin less than a year from the Democrat National Convention telling customers to leave Bank of America. And Bank of America, I’m sure, is probably heavily invested in the Democrat National Convention if for no other reason than protection money. And it works. Tell me who isn’t afraid of government, tell me who’s not afraid of this regime? I really do, I find this so illustrative, folks, so instructive of who we’re dealing with.
Who are these people? Who do they think they are? Come up with this stupid amendment that will exclusively punish Bank of America, think that Bank of America will just sit there and take it, then when Bank of America says, “You know what, we just had our costs go up and we have our own fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and our bottom line, so debit card transactions now will be charged at five dollars because of action taken by the Dodd-Frank bill.” The real culprit here, the reason your banking costs go up, the reason your cable bills are what they are is because members of Congress and the Senate like Durbin get involved and try to tell these companies how to run themselves and come up with this legislation that’s supposed to be punitive, this was supposed to punish Bank of America, in fact, the whole banking industry, the premise being that banks screw people.
So these guys are the Robin Hoods. They’re the guys on the white horse. They’re gonna come in, they’re gonna make it all better for everybody. And then when it backfires, it’s no different — remember when the regime signed into law Obamacare, there were a couple, maybe three, large corporate entities — I forget who they are right now — immediately said, “You know, we have to take a one to two billion dollar write-down on our future revenues because of the law requirements in Obamacare.” Henry “Nostrilitis” Waxman heard this and sent threatening letters to the CEOs of these corporations demanding that they round up all relevant documents and appear before his committee to explain themselves. It turns out that all these corporations were doing was adhering to the law.
Whenever legislation is passed, companies must apply changes in that law in that quarter, not when the law is implemented, but when it’s passed and signed. Because of that these small and large corporations started taking write-downs and charges that the law would now impose on them, and Waxman was totally ignorant of this. He thought that it was a bunch of right-wing conservative businesspeople who were trying to pull a fast one, blame Obamacare for big financial losses that were ahead for them. And then somebody said, “No, Congressman Waxman, this is the law. You probably voted for it.” So he backed down and canceled all of this. But it was a clear illustration of the regime in action, and so is this. So you sit there, you work at Bank of America or you run Bank of America and you got a United States senator on the floor of the Senate urging Bank of America customers to leave. It’s just over the top and it is by no means what serious United States senators ought to be doing.
Check this, AP: “To the dismay of consumer groups and the discomfort of Democrats, President Barack Obama wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cell phones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other billions owed the federal government. The change ‘is expected to provide substantial increases in collections, particularly as an increasing share of households no longer have landlines and rely instead on cell phones,’ the administration wrote recently. The little-noticed recommendation would apply only to cases in which money is owed the government, and is tucked into the mammoth $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan the president submitted to Congress.”
What $3 trillion deficit reduction plan? There is no such thing. There is no such thing as a $3 trillion deficit reduction plan. What is that? Anyway, the bottom line is, the regime, “To the dismay of consumer groups and the discomfort of Democrats, President Barack Obama wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cell phones of consumers delinquent on student loans.” Robo-calls, if you will, to your cell phone. Do you know the solution for this? You want people to start repaying their loans? Jobs. The reason people aren’t repaying their loans is because they don’t have jobs, Mr. Obama. The reason they’re not able to go out and engage in commerce and grow the economy is because they don’t have jobs, Mr. Durbin. You want people to repay their loans, you want businesses to start hiring people, leave them alone. It’s that simple.
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