Josh Hawley works with Bernie Sanders to cap credit card interest rate at 10%. What? | Opinion
Last week, one Missouri senator worked with one former presidential candidate to cap credit card interest for consumers.
Good news, right? And if you haven’t been following politics, you might assume these are two Republican politicians working together.
You would be wrong.
So wrong in fact, that The Wall Street Journal referred to this liaison as a “mind meld.” That’s the term for a space alien’s mental connection with a human from the Sci-Fi TV show “Star Trek.”
That’s how strange it sounds and feels, even writing this sentence:
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced bipartisan legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years.
Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall when these two got together in a room — or a Zoom window — to hash this out?
When you think about it, however, it’s not that strange. You certainly might expect a consumer-friendly proposal coming from Sanders, possibly the leftiest of the left-wing legislators. But take a look back at Hawley’s recent legislation and you’ll find — between the party-line Republican chatter — some good work to help put money back into the pockets and purses of Missourians.
Let’s take a look at this most recent bill, which both Hawley and Sanders point out follows President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of a 10% interest rate cap.
The bill, if passed, promises to immediately lower credit interest rates, currently at an average of 28%, and cap it at 10% for five years.
Hawley called interest rates “exploitative.” “Working Americans are drowning in record credit card debt while the biggest credit card issuers get richer and richer by hiking their interest rates to the moon. It’s not just wrong, it’s exploitative. And it needs to end,” he said in a statement on his website.
Likewise, Sanders used fiery language: “When large financial institutions charge over 25% interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of making credit available. They are engaged in extortion and loan sharking.”
Both senators said the five-year term would allow families to catch up and pay their bills.
Wishful thinking perhaps? There’s no guarantee that any person would use ant money saved to pay bills, but it’s possible. I do agree a 28% average interest rate on credit cards sure feels like highway robbery.
But Forbes, which both senators attribute that high average interest rate statistic to, questions whether or not the bill would work.
A Forbes correspondent writes: “Why, if price controls always and everywhere fail with one market good, would they work with money exchangeable for all market goods? It’s a good question, and it’s one that Senators Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley perhaps haven’t contemplated.”
But back to Hawley’s man-of-the-people legislation: in December he introduced a bill that would make it illegal for airlines to incentivize their employees to badger passengers into paying added fees for baggage, seating and other services.
Hawley also wrote bipartisan legislation with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to try to drive down prescription drug costs by making it illegal for big insurance companies to own both a pharmacy business and a pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM.
Hawley wrote on social media: “Start putting patients first.” Agreed.
But just when I want to give the senator an attaboy, I can’t forget these lapses:
In 2023 and still noted on his senate website, “Senator Hawley opens whistleblower tipline for those with knowledge of abuses at pediatric transgender centers.”
And this, just last month:
During Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings for head of the Health and Human Services Department, “Senator Hawley asked Kennedy if he would rescind the Biden administration’s mandate that every doctor in America who receives federal funding – including pediatricians — must prescribe puberty blockers and perform gender ‘transition’ surgeries on children, regardless of their conscience.”
There is no evidence that either assertion of this abuse is happening.
It’s clear that Missourians appreciate Hawley, having voted him back again in November with 55.6% of the vote over challenger Lucas Kunce at 41.8.
Hawley seems to like Missourians, too. At least some of them. And he’ll work across the aisle when he needs to.
I encourage you to be a real man of all the people, Senator, with the legislative work we know you can do.
