PCCC’s email seeks additional co-sponsors for the legislation. But the legislation is mainly a signpost for the idea that Americans still have a choice with their banking. That choice is dwindling as banks consoldiate to an amazing degree. But there still are community banks and credit unions in almost every city, eager for the opportunity to work with customers without trying to gouge them at every turn. And while legislation to make the process of changing banks hassle-free would be very nice, just highlighting the whole idea has value. It adds the notion of competition into a market where banks want none.

Ever since Bank of America and other banks announced their monthly fees for using debit cards for purchases (BofA is leading the way on this with their $5 monthly fee), I’ve heard an elevated amount of conversation about it from friends and passersby. Most public policy doesn’t grab the person in the street, but charging five bucks to use your own money to buy something has hit a nerve. It’s not for nothing that BofA’s website went down today.

Remember that swipe fee measure that passed the Senate twice? It lowered the amount credit card companies can charge merchants to $.12 a transaction. It was a stunning victory that retailers (which admittedly includes WalMart but also includes your locally owned business struggling to stay in business) won that battle twice.

Well, lucky for the banksters, they had one more ace in their pocket: The Federal Reserve, which just cut the baby in half and set transaction fees at $.21 plus some anti-fraud amounts.

There are two tiers of justice in America. The rich get access to the courts and the ability to avoid accountability if they commit wrongdoing. The poor don’t.

We have all kinds of problems (unemployment, foreclosure, not to mention two wars) that we seem unable to do anything about. What we can do in the United States Congress is engage in a months-long lobby bonanza between the largest retailers in the country and the largest banks in the country over how they will split up the fee for when you purchase products via debit card. And finally, that battle over swipe fees gets a vote today.

A couple weeks ago, we saw the enormous lobby culture massing around swipe fees, the relatively obscure issue that determines where billions of dollars go between banks and retailers. The important thing to start with is that this was already determined through a public process. Last year, Congress held a vote, Dick Durbin got over 60 of his colleagues to support him, the measure survived reconciliation, passed into law, and the Federal Reserve began to implement the rule. The system, therefore, worked. What banks are doing is trying to roll back the clock on the reform. They were paying attention to other matters in FinReg and now they have circled back to this. Because they have money and influence, they think they can just nullify a year’s worth of policymaking.