Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders to take on credit card industry with new legislation
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders will propose legislation Thursday to cap credit card interest at 15 percent.
Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, said a decade after taxpayers bailed out the big banks at the beginning of the recession, they are making billions on credit card interest.
“Today’s loan sharks wear expensive suits and work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions of dollars in total compensation by charging sky-high fees and usurious interest rates, and head financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and American Express,” according to a statement from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez, who worked on Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, will introduce the measure in the House.
The bill is aimed at returning interest rates to a cap that had been imposed by Congress in 1980, but was later overturned by the Supreme Court. Sanders tried to impose caps on interest rates in a 2009 bill, but failed to secure the votes to get it as a part of the sweeping post-financial crisis reform at the time.
Sanders acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Post that the bill will face stiff resistance in the GOP-controlled Senate.
”I am sure it will be criticized,” Sanders said. ”I have a radical idea, maybe Congress should stand up for ordinary people.”
The two will announce the proposal at noon on Sanders’ Facebook page.
The average interest rate on new credit card offers is at a record high 17.73 percent, according to Creditcards.com, which has been tracking the rates since 2007.
That rate is a full percentage point higher than it was last year.
It was even lower in May 2016 — 15.19 percent.