An unlikely pairing of Senators have come together to go after something nobody likes: credit card interest rates.
On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a bill that would cap credit card interest rates at 10%.
Hawley shared his motives for the bill, which comes with his colleague across the aisle, in a post on social media.
“Credit card interest rates are out of control. Rates have DOUBLED in recent years. In 2022 alone, credit cards charged Americans $105 billion in interest,” Hawley wrote on X. “Today @BernieSanders and I are teaming up to introduce a 10% cap on interest rates – just like @realDonaldTrump proposed.”
Sanders has also commented on the proposed legislation, sharing in a statement that current interest rates are not good for consumers and make credit less available for Americans.
“When large financial institutions charge over 25 percent interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of making credit available. They are engaged in extortion and loan sharking,” Sanders said in a statement.
The pair cited a recent Forbes report, which found that the average credit card interest rate is 28.6%, set far above the rate at which banks are able to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, which is currently 4.5%.
The report highlighted that the current interest rate is also far higher than it was just three months ago, when “the average credit card interest rate in the US on accounts with balances that assessed interest was 22.80%,” Forbes reported, citing the Federal Reserve.
“We cannot continue to allow big banks to make huge profits ripping off the American people,” Sanders said. “This legislation will provide working families struggling to pay their bills with desperately needed financial relief.”
If the legislation is signed into law as is, it will see the proposed cap put in place for the next five years. It may have an easy time through Congress as well, with President Donald Trump previously supporting the idea of a cap at a September campaign rally.
“While working Americans catch up, we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates. We’re going to cap it at around 10%,” Trump said during the rally. “We can’t let them make 25 and 30 percent.”