Republicans call for credit card APR to cap at 18%: Sen. Josh Hawley calls for cap to keep rates from skyrocketing to 24% and debt from reaching $1 trillion
- Hawley took aim at soaring interest rates, which have reached an average of 28% this week, just as credit card debt levels topped $1 trillion in the United States.
- He put credit card issuers directly in his crosshairs: ‘We know what they’re doing’
- “They’re actively encouraging and finding new ways to put consumers into debt — they’re raising rates and they can profit from it,” Hawley said.
Sen. Josh Hawley has a new populist proposal that eschews the Republican economic laissez-faire of old: He wants to put an 18 percent cap on credit card interest rates.
The Missouri Republican took aim at soaring interest rates, which averaged 28% this week, just as credit card debt levels topped $1 trillion in states -United.
In the comments to RealClearPoliticsHawley noted that the government “rushed to bail out the banks this spring,” referring to Silicon Valley Bank of California and Signature Bank of New York, but “ignored workers struggling to get ahead.”
He put credit card issuers directly in his crosshairs: “We know what they’re doing. »
Sen. Josh Hawley has a new populist proposal that eschews the Republican economic laissez-faire of old: He wants to put an 18 percent cap on credit card interest rates.
“They’re actively encouraging and finding new ways to put consumers into debt — they’re raising rates and they can profit from it,” Hawley said.
Setting credit card APR caps would be a “fair” and “common sense” way to give “the working class a chance,” according to Hawley.
President Biden has made eliminating “unwanted” credit card fees a goal of his administration, but Hawley’s proposal pushes it even further to the left.
That puts him in line with democratic socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who introduced the Loan Shark Prevention Act in 2019 to cap credit card APRs. credit at 15%.
In comments to RCP, Hawley defended his proposal: “We have a long history in this country of laws, at the state and federal level, that prevent what we used to call usury – an old-fashioned word for the worker scam. and we must return to it.
The Missouri Republican took aim at soaring interest rates, which averaged 28% this week, just as credit card debt levels topped $1 trillion in states -United.
Hawley led the charge against the Republican Party’s bitterness toward the business-friendly policies it espoused above all else for decades — he proposed legislation that would cap the price of insulin at $25 and championed a wage subsidy proposal that would use federal dollars to raise the minimum wage. .
Credit card balances soared by $45 billion between the first and second quarters of 2023, pushing total credit card debt past the $1 trillion mark, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The rate of credit card defaults also increased and exceeded 5 percent in July, the Fed said.
A spokesperson for the American Banker’s Association (ABA) told DailyMail.com of the proposal: “Price controls don’t work.”
“This proposal would harm consumers by restricting access to credit to those who need it most and pushing them toward less regulated and more expensive alternatives.”
